Walt Whitman

1819-1892 , West Hills, Long Island , NY

Related Schools & Movements:

Romanticism
Texts by this Poet:
Specimen Days [The Inauguration]

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Texts about this Poet:
Poets Odd Jobs
Queer Poets on the Poems That Changed Their Lives
Banned Books
Our Sly Progenitor: Revisiting Walt Whitman
Taking a Walk through Leaves of Grass
Whitmans Long Lines
Whitmans Words
Walt Whitman Discussion Questions
A Close Reading of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
A Guide to Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass
On A child said, What is the grass?
Elegy and Eros: Configuring Grief
Walking Tour: Walt Whitmans SoHo Historic District in New York City
Walking Tour: Walt Whitmans Printing House Square in New York City
Back Down to Earth: On Walt Whitmans Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass
On Whitman: Depths
On Whitman: Mortality
On Whitman: The Music
Manuscript Study: Walt Whitman
From the Archive: Poets Stamps
From the Archive: Whitman Walking Tour
What I Feel About Walt Whitman
It Looks Quite Curious: Oppens Whitman

read poems by this poet

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, the second son of
Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The
family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and
Long Island in the 1820s and 1830s.
At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printers
trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely selftaught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the
works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.
Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a
devastating fire in the printing district demolished the
industry. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, he began his
career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long
Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to
journalism as a full-time career.
He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later
edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848,
Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of
the New Orleans Crescent. It was in New Orleans that he
experienced firsthand the viciousness of slavery in the slave
markets of that city. On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of
1848, he founded a free soil newspaper, the Brooklyn
Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of
poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition
ofLeaves of Grass, which consisted of twelve untitled poems
and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a
copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second
edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-three poems, a
letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long
open letter by Whitman in response. During his lifetime,
Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several
more editions of the book. Noted Whitman scholar, M. Jimmie
Killingsworth writes that the merge,' as Whitman conceived
it, is the tendency of the individual self to overcome moral,

psychological, and political boundaries. Thematically and

poetically, the notion dominates the three major poems of
1855: I Sing the Body Electric,' The Sleepers,' and Song of
Myself,' all of which were merged in the first edition under
the single title Leaves of Grass but were demarcated by clear
breaks in the text and the repetition of the title.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a
purged and cleansed life. He worked as a freelance
journalist and visited the wounded at New York Cityarea
hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D. C. in December
1862 to care for his brother who had been wounded in the
war.
Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in
Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the
hospitals and stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a
job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which
ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan,
discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass,
which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.
Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his
life. In Washington, he lived on a clerks salary and modest
royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from
friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had
also been sending money to his widowed mother and an
invalid brother. From time to time writers both in the states
and in England sent him purses of money so that he could
get by.
In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, New Jersey,
where he had come to visit his dying mother at his brothers
house. However, after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it
impossible to return to Washington. He stayed with his
brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass (James
R. Osgood) gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in
Camden.

In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his

declining years working on additions and revisions to a new
edition of the book and preparing his final volume of poems
and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (David McKay, 1891). After
his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb
he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.
Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered one of Americas
most important poets.
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Related Poem Content Details

BY WALT WHITMAN
1
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the westsun there half an hour highI see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to
me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are
more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more
in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-joind scheme, myself disintegrated, every one
disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in
the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,

Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of
Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see
them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of
the ebb-tide.

3
It avails not, time nor placedistance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations
hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refreshd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was
refreshd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet
was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemmd pipes of
steamboats, I lookd.

I too many and many a time crossd the river of old,

Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating with
motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the rest in strong
shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Lookd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in the
sunlit water,
Lookd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Lookd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Lookd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,

Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine
pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and
glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite
storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flankd on each side by
the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high and
glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow light over the tops
of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.

4
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the sameothers who look back on me because I lookd forward to them,
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)

5
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails notdistance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walkd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,

In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receivd identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be I knew I should be of my
body.

6
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seemd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabbd, blushd, resented, lied, stole, grudgd,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was calld by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me
approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against
me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet never told
them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,

Playd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.

7
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of youI laid in my stores in
advance,
I considerd long and seriously of you before you were born.

Who was to know what should come home to me?

Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you
cannot see me?

8
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemmd
Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edgd waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated
lighter?

What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call
me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that looks in my
face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?

We understand then do we not?

What I promisd without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teachwhat the preaching could not accomplish is
accomplishd, is it not?

9
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edgd waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and
women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!

Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!

Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest
name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old role, the role that is great or small according as one makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be looking upon
you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste with the
hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes
have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or any ones head, in the
sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-saild schooners,
sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lowerd at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall! cast red
and yellow light over the tops of the houses!

Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,

You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung out divinest aromas,
Thrive, citiesbring your freight, bring your shows, ample and sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us,

We use you, and do not cast you asidewe plant you permanently within us,
We fathom you notwe love youthere is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.

Walt Whitman: Poems Summary and Analysis of

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
Summary:
In this poem, the speaker describes his daily commute on a ferry running
between Brooklyn and Manhattan. He begins by describing his
surroundings: the water below, the clouds, the sunrise, and
thecommuters around him. Though all of the passengers are following
their ordinary daily ritual, the speaker finds them to be "curious"
(strange). He thinks about all the people who have made this journey in
the past and how many are yet to repeat it long into the future. This
thought carries him into a meditation on the connection between the past
and the future and how all of the people on this particular ferry fit into the
equation.
In the third section of the poem, the speaker explores the commonalities
between all the commuters who have traveled and will travel on this ferry.
No matter the era, travelers on this ferry route will experience the same,
timeless view: the round masts, the steamer ships in motion, and the
seagulls flying by. The speaker feels as though these shared experiences
can unite people across different historical eras. In the fifth section of the
poem, he asserts that all humans are connected across time and space.

The speaker offers some details about the rest of his routine - living
in Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. He professes to be fairly
confident in his identity. However, there are traces of darkness in
his life, as well. He admits that sometimes, evil thoughts cross his
mind. He used to wonder if he was the only one who felt this way
but has since overcome his insecurity. Now, he reassures his
readers that he has continued living his life fully despite these
moments of weakness. He has learned to quell his desire to sin as
if he is an actor playing a part, just like most of the people he
passes on the street.

The speaker then "approaches" his readers more closely and

claims that they see each other in the same way. He reiterates the
eternal connection between all human beings. In the 10th verse, he
exclaims that nothing is more beautiful or admirable than his view of
stately Manhattan from his ferry. He commands the river to keep
flowing, the waves to keep frolicking, and the clouds to drench him
with their splendor. In a joyous tribute to his ferry trip, he lists all the
different components of his environment and commands each one
to keep doing what it is doing. He says that it is the physical world
that binds us all together and allows us to know our own souls. We
must revel in our physical surroundings, for our relationship with our
environment is the ticket to achieving spirituality and fulfillment.

Analysis:
Walt Whitman wrote "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" before the
construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (which was completed in 1883).
During Whitman's time, the ferry was the way most commuters
traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Additionally, Whitman
wrote this poem at the cusp of the American Civil War, during a time
when America's identity was deeply bifurcated. Therefore,
Whitman's message of unity and the importance of shared
experiences was both rare and vital.
In accordance with his signature style, Whitman wrote "Crossing
Brooklyn Ferry" in free-verse. The 1881 version is divided into nine
sections and has 147 lines. The sections are of varying lengths, as
are the lines; Whitman did not like to constrain his poetic expression
with form, meter, or a specific rhyme scheme. Whitman also utilizes
his favorite list technique many times in this poem. He lists the
aspects of his surroundings, lists, the evil thoughts he has had and
the sinful acts he has committed, and, at the very end of the poem,
he lists the characteristics of his environment. These lists create a
powerful and detailed image, so that the reader can travel
alongside Whitman on the "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry."
The overarching theme of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is the shared
human experience. Whitman draws the reader's attention to the

quiet details of his commute and makes them sound extraordinary.

Even though time may pass and society might change, natural
wonders like the wind, the clouds, the sun, the seagulls, and the
water will always be markers of the journey between Manhattan and
Brooklyn. Ultimately, Whitman makes "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
universal by emphasizing the inherent and enduring connection
between man and nature.
The speaker's journey between Manhattan and Brooklyn is a
metaphor for the passage of time. The repetition of this trip across
the East River time and time again represents the cycles of history.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker remarks that many have
completed this journey before him and many will travel this route
after he is gone. The idea that many will experience the same
feelings that he is currently experiencing gives the speaker comfort.
Although time will change many things - the faces of the people, the
ferry itself, the cityscape before him - there are certain markers of
his journey that human beings can never tamper with. The poem,
like the ferry, moves the reader fluidly through past, present, and
future and the speaker's words highlight the narrative thread that
connects all human beings.
Besides the ever-moving tide, Whitman uses light and darkness to
symbolize the multiple facets of the human identity. He describes
his evil thoughts as his inner darkness, hidden from public view just
as the night casts a blanket over the river during his evening
commute. He also uses the theater as a metaphor to represent the
difference between public life and private life. He acknowledges that
he has a sinful streak - but in society, everyone plays a role. The
speaker's tone in the poem is honest but also grateful. By
appreciating the small things in his life, he feels like a part of
something bigger.

Title:
'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' [1856]
Author:
Nelson, Howard
Print source:
J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998), reproduced by permission.
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" first appeared in the second edition of Leaves of Grass under the title
"Sun-Down Poem." It received its present title in 1860, and Whitman revised the poem through
the various editions. Thoreau named it and "Song of Myself" as his favorite Whitman poems, and
he was only one of the first in a long line of readers who have ranked "Crossing" among
Whitman's best. It is one of those mid-length lyrics that offered Whitman what some critics have
felt to be his most effective formnot so sprawling as "Song of Myself" but with enough space to
allow him some musical and thematic amplitude. "Crossing" is generally regarded, along with
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," as one of
his supreme achievements in this mode.
Late in life Whitman commented, "My own favorite loafing places have always been the rivers,
the wharves, the boatsI like sailors, stevedores. I have never lived away from a big river"
(Traubel 71). In his younger adult years and again in old age, his river experiences were
especially connected with ferriesthe latter crossing the Delaware between Camden and
Philadelphia, the former crossing the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Both of these
periods are acknowledged in entries in Specimen Days : "I have always had a passion for ferries;
to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems" (16), and "What communion
with the waters, the air, the exquisite chiaroscuro the sky and stars, that speak no word,
nothing to the intellect, yet so eloquent, so communicative to the soul" (183). He had written
about ferries in his journalism. He editorialized against rate increases, and used the hustle and
bustle of the ferries as an image of the frantic pace and impersonality of modern lifeno doubt
among the earliest protests against the rat-race of the urban commuter. In "Crossing" he looks at
ferries and ferry-riding from a quite different perspective.
"Crossing" says nothing about the poet's reason for crossing the river; the focus is not on a
purpose or destination but on the act of crossing itself and the surrounding spectacle: the water,
the people, the sun going down, the boats and docks and city in the distance. The poem
describes the daily experience of a mid-nineteenth-century New York ferry-rider, mundane
enough to most but glorious to Whitman. At the same time it makes the trip the basis for a
profound meditation on time and flux and how we exist both within and outside them.

"Crossing" is a very visual poem, conveying a strong sense of particular detail, the play of light,
and vista; a number of critics have compared it to painting in its effects, including that of the
luminists, Turner, and the popular panorama paintings of the day. It is also richly symbolic, and its
symbolic implications arise naturally from the setting and images. The river, the ebb and flow of
tides, the boat, the shuttling from one shore to the othersome of the oldest, richest images of
the human imagination presented themselves to Whitman in his ferry-riding; in his daily
experience he was moving among archetypes.
Whitman grasped not just the larger fundamental images that resonate throughout the poem; he
used discrete particulars strikingly as well. For example, leaning on the rail of a ferry is a
particularly apt image of standing still and moving simultaneously and of the paradox of existing
in both particular moments and a ceaseless flow of time. Similarly, "the fine centrifugal spokes of
light round the shape of my head in the sunlit water" (section 3) is perfectly accurate in its
observation, entirely native to the scene, and at the same time uncannily suggestive and
appropriate in a poem in which ordinary human beings going about their daily business have a
kind of transcendence, so that the poet asks "what gods can exceed these that clasp me by the
hand . . . ?" (section 8). These examples only begin to suggest the symbolic resonances and
possibilities of the poem.
Critics have disagreed about the degree to which the poem is psychological, and psychologically
troubledthat is, how much it expresses doubts and struggles in its author, whether feelings of
isolation, fear of actual intimacy in life as opposed to intimacy in poems, or gender identity.
Psychological critics find a good deal of conflict sublimated into the poem's imagery and tend to
emphasize the poem as process, a way of coping or groping toward a resolution Whitman may or
may not achieve or fully believe. Of course, many critics are by training and temperament
disposed to look for the dark, and some, as if by reflex, view any affirmation, let alone one as farreaching as Whitman's here, as suspect or regressive. Other critics, while not denying
psychological content, see the poem as more philosophicalan Emersonian poem in that it
conveys a transcendent apprehension of reality, an achieved vision, and does so with a certain
degree of didacticism and composure. Even Edwin Haviland Miller, one of the best-known of
Whitman's psychological critics, finds the poem placid, circling rather than journeying or diving
and lacking the psychological exploration or turmoil of such poems as "The Sleepers" or "Out of
the Cradle."
Whatever directions critics take in their readings of "Crossing," all include the fundamental theme
of time and flux, which Whitman introduces in the first section as he addresses first the physical
scene itself, then the people riding the ferry with him, and then those who will come after him, far
into the future. He makes large claims from the outset: that he sees in all things a "simple,
compact, well-join'd scheme" (section 2) and that time and place "avail not" (section 3)a

transcendental claim of unity and cohesion in the universe and throughout time. The conscious
purpose of the poem is to communicate this sense of unity; not just to explain it, but to convey it
in the most immediate way.
How does one go beyond individual identity, flux, and time? The poem offers at least three ways:
through the physical world itself; through shared human nature and experience; and through
works of art (and especially this work of art).
In addition to being a poem of cumulative, orchestral, meditative beauty, "Crossing" is also a
poem of memorable lines and phrases. One of those lines, in fact, suggests the effect very well:
"I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution" (section 5). Just as an individual
person is catalyzed out of a flowboth the bodily fluids of parents and the flow of life itselfthe
poem turns on certain phrasings that seem "struck," precipitated sharply and suddenly, out of the
larger meditative and rhetorical movement. Two such phrases, which critics have focused on and
any reader would take note of, express the key point of the importance of the things of this world,
of physical reality. Near the beginning of the poem Whitman calls the sights and sounds around
him "glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings" (section 2); near the end, he
refers to objects and physical surroundings as "dumb, beautiful ministers" (section 9). The pun
on religion hearkens back to Whitman's 1855 Preface and his suggestion that priests will soon be
supplanted by the physical world itself, poetically perceived. Though Whitman did not foresee the
demise of the ferries, he knew that people in the future would, like him, see the gulls turning in
late afternoon light, the rise and fall of tides, the river flowing, and the sun, and in that he felt a
kind of immortality. (Later, when the Brooklyn Bridge was being built, the threat to ferries became
apparent, and Whitmanregistered far less enthusiasm for that particular modern engineering
wonder than would be expected of him.)
Another of the poem's memorable lines, "The dark threw its patches down upon me also"
(section 6), expresses the second way that Whitman finds unity across time. The dark patches at
first refer to "curious abrupt questionings" (section 5) that stir within him. Then he goes well
beyond doubts to a litany of human frailties and failings, all of which, he tells the reader, he was
as subject to as anyone. This empathy creates another bond between poet and reader, present
and future. Some critics have found this confession unconvincing, too general or easy. (One of
the acts to which Whitman did seem to attach some real guilt, masturbation, was removed from
the catalogue when he cut the phrase "solitary committer" in later editions.) But even some who
feel this way find another aspect of the poem's reaching out to the reader remarkable. Whitman
raised the direct address to the reader, a common enough device in pre-twentieth-century
literature, to an entirely different level, not artificial, but strangely, convincingly intimate.
"Crossing" is one of the outstanding examples of this, both in individual lines, such as "Who
knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now" (section 7), and in its overall

effect. To what degree Whitman meant this ghostly, vivid presence to be taken literally is left to
the reader's judgment and imagination.
The idea of art as a means of transcending time is one that "Crossing" shares with other works,
such as Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." What perhaps makes "Crossing" distinctive in its
treatment of this theme is its dynamic, kinesthetic quality. A number of critics have commented on
the way the poem creates a sense of motion, how, through imagery and linguistic devices,
everything within it seems to be flowing, swirling, moving. The experience-caught-in-art seems
here more like a motion picture than a carving.
"Crossing" has long been admired for its artistic control. Theme, imagery, rhythm, and symbolism
work together to a degree that Whitman rarely achieved, and the poem has a formal quality
without sacrificing freshness. Whatever the artistry or alchemy he brought to bear, in "Crossing"
Whitman wrote a poem that fits startlingly well his description of the experience-poems that ferryriding gave him personally again and again: "inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems"
(Whitman 16).