And the sooner it’s over, the sooner to sleep;
And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.

These lines evoke a speaker who longs for an ordeal to end so that rest—“sleep”—can come. The “bar” suggests a ship’s setting (the sandbar or coastal bar over which waves break), and its “moaning” personifies the sea’s continual, mournful sound. Read this way, the couplet captures a sailor’s or traveler’s weary resignation: once the dangerous passage or hard watch is finished, there will be release from both labor and the sea’s oppressive noise. More broadly, it can be read as a meditation on endurance—pushing through hardship with the hope of quiet, oblivion, or peace afterward.