Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is a poem that exemplifies Whitman's abilities as a leading proponent of the transcendentalism literary movement. The poem depicts a thoughtful narrator taking the Brooklyn ferry home. He absorbs the entire scene, and early in the poem he has an uncanny sense in his observations of the throng of humanity taking the ferry:
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me! (1057)
In this everyday scene, the narrator has a transcendent moment in which he realizes that this same ferry will host future generations long after its current passengers have died. He pictures the ebb and flow of a constant ocean, the buzzing streets of Manhattan, the hills of Brooklyn, and several other striking images. In the poem, the ferry plays a role as a potent metaphor: it is the bridge between the present and the future.
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 (1058).
Nature plays a similar role as something that remains constant in the face of a changing, evolving mass of humanity:
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!(1061)
The vivid, grandiose imagery Whitman presents is made more potent because he is focusing on what many would consider to be a mundane scene. He casts the ferry as a bridge between the present and the future, and exalts the natural scenery he depicts as a reminder of the constancy of our world.
All line numbers were retrieved from The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1 7th Ed
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