Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
death, but then rebirth, and that the spirit of God is
Walt Whitman at 71, June 1890 (Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division)
Continuities (1888)
First published in the NEW YORK HERALD (March
20, 1888); then in November Boughs (1888); and it
was the 38th of 65 poems in the First Annex:
Sands at Seventy cluster for the Death-bed
printing of Leaves of Grass (1892).
Whitman identifies the source of this poem as a
talk he had had lately with a German spiritualist,
the gist of which was that nothing is ever really
lost, or can be lost. There is continuity, a con-
nectedness among all things that keeps those
things alive: The body, sluggish, aged, coldthe
embers left from earlier fires, / The light in the eye
grown dim, shall duly flame again. But everything
returns, just as does the spring grass and flowers
and summer fruits and corn.
The idea of continuities ties in with two of
Whitmans thematic ideas: that from life there is
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry brings together sev-
in all things and that all things reflect that spirit
(see PANTHEISM).
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
(1856)
Published first as Sun-Down Poem in the second
edition of Leaves of Grass (1856); then under its
present title and as a separate poem (1860); it
became the third of 12 separate poems that followed
the Calamus cluster in the sixth edition (1881).
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is generally considered to
be one of the greatest of Whitmans poems.
The poet takes a mystical journey, not to a union
with God as in Song of Myself, but to a union with
people outside the normal limits of time or space.
Even during Whitmans life, the actual ferry service
for the half-mile run across the East River from
BROOKLYN to New York took only a few minutes, so
it must have been the crowds of people who made
the trip daily that influenced the poet to think of it
as a metaphor for the movement of time. People
had been taking the ferry since the beginning of the
service in 1642 (using rowboats), and were, during
Whitmans years in Brooklyn, using the steamboat
service of the New York and Brooklyn Ferry Com-
pany. The poet took the ferry frequently, even if just
to walk the streets of the lower part of the city. He
wrote the poem several years before the BROOKLYN
BRIDGE was built (187083), but the bridge didnt
matter in Whitmans mystical vision. link between time present and time future when
Whitman refers to it as the Brooklyn Ferry, but
during most of its history it has been called the
FULTON FERRY, because it began at Fulton Landing,
a waterfront village on the Brooklyn side of the
river. Robert Fulton was in 1807 the first to make
steam navigation a success, and in 1814 he began
his steamboat ferry service across the East River,
running boats from the foot of what is now Old Ful-
ton Street in Brooklyn to the present Pier 11 ferry
stop in New York City. The Fulton Ferry still runs
every half hour most of the day from Fulton Ferry
Landing beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to five land-
ing stations on the New York side of the East River.
tion 2, a transitional seven lines to the future tense
eral of Whitmans poetic skills, not the least of
which is one of the clearest examples of the rhythm
of his FREE VERSE style. Free verse was a shock to
mid-19th-century readers of poetry, accustomed as
they were to a uniform metrical pattern and a
rhyme scheme. Whitman presented instead large
stanzaic patterns, similar to those in ancient
Hebrew poetry, especially in the Psalms of the Old
Testament.
Because of the merging of past, present, and
future verb tenses and a gradual shift from a narra-
tive I to you and then to we, the reader and stand beginning in Section 4, neither the East River
the poet become one in this mystical voyage across
the river. The poet warps time in order to merge
himself with people, past, present, and future, the
ferry crossing only a starting point for his journey.
SECTIONS 13
The poem contains nine sections and 133 lines.
The first three sections describe, through a series of
verb tense shifts, the movement of people across
the river to and from work or pleasure, the people
no different, Whitman insists, from people in any
other part of the world or in any historic time. In
every moment of the earths daily passage around
the sun, people are moving from one place to
another, and a few hours later back again.
The Brooklyn Ferry is established by Whitman as
a sort of touchstone in Section 1, meant to do two
things: first, to create a moment in time present, the
time in which Whitman lives, rides the ferry him-
self, and writes this poem; and second, to create a
back on his own time and place: I too many and
readersfor example 21st-century readers, 150 or
more years after the poems creationwill meditate
about Whitman meditating about us. This mystical,
transcendent moment comes at the end of the sec-
tion: On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hun- the ferry journey into a spiritual vision: He Lookd
dreds 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.
As we read these lines and those that follow, we find
ourselves traveling in both his time and ours.
The present tense at the end of Section 1 shifts
to an indefinite verb tense in the first stanza of Sec-
of the seven-line second stanza, where the poet can
say of the ferryboat passengers: A hundred years
hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, oth-
ers will see them, / Will enjoy the sunset, the pour-
ing-in of the flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea
of the ebb-tide.
In Section 3 the poet transcends time and place
in order to join the future reader, even those living
A hundred years henceor 150 years hence.
Whitman insists that It avails not, time nor
placedistance avails not. And, as we will under-
nor the Brooklyn Ferry matter. Any avenue of travel
will do. I am with you, he says to us, you men and
women of a generation, or ever so many generations
hence. And we are refreshd by what we see on
our voyage just as he was refreshd.
The poet even looks back on himself from his
new place in the future, remembering how he
crossd the river of old and had his eyes dazzled
by all that he saw.
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 stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry
with the swift current, I stood yet was
hurried. . . .
The poet has left his own time and place to join
readers in their time and place, no matter when or
where that is. And he feels the luxury of looking
many a time crossd the river of old, and he then
CATALOGs all the things he saw (past tense).
Midway through the long second stanza of Sec-
tion 3 he turns the catalog of things he saw on
at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the
shape of [his] head in the sunlit water. This image
of centrifugal spokes around the shadow of his
own head in the water suggests a kind of divinity
shared, he believes, by all people and makes stronger
the connection of the poet with the hundreds and
hundreds who cross on the ferry, or who travel
anywherepast, present, or future.
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
SECTIONS 46
The Brooklyn Ferrys symbolic importance becomes
clear in the rest of the poem as the poet moves
from the ferry-crossing imagery to the feeling he
has for his spiritual closeness with the reader. He
represents this closeness by merging past and pres-
ent tense verbs in the first line of the five-line Sec-
tion 4: These and all else were to me the same as
they are to you (verb emphasis added). It was the
image of the halo he saw around the shadow of his
head on the water in Section 3 that sets up this
emotional closeness to readers in the later sections.
He thinks of the others who look back on me, he
says, because I lookd forward to them.
At the beginning of Section 5 he wonders what
it is then between us, / What is the count of the
scores or hundreds of years between us? What is it
that, in spite of time and space, binds us together.
The bonds imagined in Section 5 are external,
while the bonds of Section 6 are internal. I too
lived, he says. I too walkd the streets of Brook-
lyn, of Manhattan. I too was curious about all the
people and events. Then, in further description, he
uses the word float to describe the state of his
body as it transcends from the physical state to the
spiritual. Float is used here and in other Whit-
man poems to indicate a state of suspension, of lev-
itation, that the poet feels in this mystical merging
of his body and soul with the bodies and souls of
others. 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. Our
identities come from an awareness of the physical
being. But it is the spiritual being, Whitman
believed, that matters more.
In Section 6 the poet continues to think about
this experience and, perhaps realizing that readers
may be concerned with a comparison of their lives
with his, Whitman lists some of his sins so others
can feel better about their own. And he continues
to use the present/past verb tense switches:
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.
The old knot of contrariety may be the mythical
knot of Satan working in mankind, tying us to evil.
And Whitman catalogs a few of these Satanic
workings in his own life, things he had done: blab-
bd, blushd, resented, lied, stole, grudgd, / Had
guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak, etc.
This was/is his life, and he has no regrets; nor
should anyone reading the poem regret his or her
sins. They are, the poet believed, a manifestation of
who he is, who we are. The only sin, Whitman sug-
gests in Song of Myself, is awareness of sin, one of
the poets larger themes in Leaves of Grass.
The old knot of contrariety may also refer to
the difficult knot of body and soul tied together, the
body sometimes acting contrary to the wishes of
the soul.
SECTIONS 79
The spiritual union of the poet with his readers takes
place in the six-line Section 7. The poet tells us that
he was thinking long and seriously about us before
we were born. Who knows but I am enjoying this, etc. Whitman summarizes the poems key thematic
he says. And now weif we are reading wellmay idea that through an appreciation for the things in
think long and seriously about the poet, and perhaps
we are enjoying ourselves as well. The sections last
line reads, Who knows, for all the distance, but I
am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot
see me? Only the truly skeptical can keep from
looking, figuratively, over his or her shoulder; the
images allow us to float also, in spiritual union
with the poet and, perhaps, with everyone who has
read this poem. It avails not, time nor placedis-
tance avails not. (See also, for similar imagery, the
endings to Song of Myself and So Long.) Flow on, river!
Section 8 reminds the reader of the imagery of
the poems opening sections: Ah, what can ever be
more stately and admirable to me than mast-
hemmd Manhattan? / River and sunset and scal-
lop-edgd waves of flood-tide? This reminder then
brings the poet to the climactic moment in the spir-
itual merger of poet and reader: What is more sub-
tle 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?
And the merger of the I into the you now
merges with the we. We understand then do we
not? We understand the mystical merging of bodies
and souls, ours not just with his, he insists, but with and the 13th of 29 poems in the By The Roadside
those of people in all time and space. Although cluster for the sixth edition of Leaves of Grass
democracy is not an overt thematic element in (1881).
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, this merging of bodies and This 10-line poem describes two eagles in flight
souls carries with it Whitmans often used definition and in the act of copulation, of dalliance, which
of democracy: the perfect equality of all people. It is become a metaphor for one of Whitmans largest
now we and not you or I. The spiritual union is Leaves of Grass themes:
complete, and ones spiritual identity provides mysti-
The rushing amorous contact high in space
cal knowledge. Readers who have difficulty with
together,
Song of Myself or Ones-self I Sing because of the
The clinching interlocking claws, a living,
seeming egotism at work in the poet may understand
fierce, gyrating wheel,
from Crossing Brooklyn Ferry that the I is always
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass
obliterated by Whitmans insistence on the we.
tight grappling, . . .
The poems final stanzas (Section 9) present a
catalogued review of images from previous sections Till oer the river poisd, the twain yet one, a
and present what amounts to a hymn of praise for moments lull,
all he and his readers have seen on this mystical A motionless still balance in the air, then parting,
journey on the Brooklyn Ferry. Flow on, river, talons loosing,
he says. And perhaps to add dramatic intensity, the Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their
poet begins 23 of the 25 lines of the sections first separate diverse flight,
stanza with a verb: Flow on, Frolic on, Cross, She hers, he his, pursuing.
The poet presents in this poem an answer to the
our respective physical worlds that help to identify baffling question of how one retains individual
who we are, we may be led to a greater understand- freedom in the midst of the democratic en
ing of our spiritual world. masse, a term Whitman uses in Song of Myself
The dumb, beautiful ministers of the poems to mean people together as a unified force. In this
final, seven-line stanza are the physical elements poem, the eagles are twain yet one, locked
that permeate the lives of all people. There is no I together in their dalliance, afterwards in a sepa-
in this final stanza and the use of the you refers to rate diverse flight, she her way, he his, pursuing.
the ministers which we receive. The pronouns Democracy involves a person being at once part
we or us are used seven times, as if to place a of the great social group but at the same time an
final emphasis on the merger of all souls into one: individual, capable of thinking and acting for him
or her self.
This journey into spiritual discoveries may be
found in several other poems as well, but Whitman
is perhaps never so forceful with the idea as in
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.
Dalliance of the Eagles, The
(1880)
First published in Copes Tobacco Plant magazine
(November 1880); then as one of three new poems