Softly and clearly, while the seawind blew in on them, Anne repeated the beautiful lines of Tennyson's wonderful swan song-- "Crossing the Bar." The old captain kept time gently with his sinewy hand. "Yes, yes, Mistress Blythe," he said, when she had finished, "that's it, that's it. He wasn't a sailor, you tell me--I dunno how he could have put an old sailor's feelings into words like that, if he wasn't one. He didn't want any 'sadness o' farewells' and neither do I, Mistress Blythe--for all will be well with me and mine beyant the bar." http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anne's_House_of_Dreams/Chapter_35 (That's where I'll always remember that poem from.)