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Rachel Mangan
GENG 222 Section 4
Mark Parker/Payton Mink
24 April 2015
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry - Greater Romantic Lyric Analysis
Albert Einstein once said, Look deep into nature and then you will understand
everything better, and Walt Whitman and the speaker in Crossing Brooklyn Ferry find meaning
and understanding after connecting with and meditating on the meaning nature. Throughout this
poem, the speaker wonders about many of lifes dualities and questions the ties that bind him to
his fellow humans and his rumination on the landscape enables him to find his own answers.
Through carefully crafted repetition, duality motifs, and imagery Whitman affirms the ultimate
epiphany, that life, although different for everyone, is interconnected through the unity of the
shared human experience.
In the beginning of the poem, the speaker stands on a ferry boat between Manhattan and
Brooklyn, describing his personal experience with his surroundings. In the first section of
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the speaker muses about the flood-tide, clouds, and sun and how he
sees them face to face (Walt Whitman 2). When he starts focusing on his fellow passengers,
the speaker exclaims, how curious you are to me, implying that he feels more camaraderie
with nature than he does with his fellow humans. He continues to wonder about the hundreds
and hundreds of people that have made the same exact ferry ride as himself, and distances
himself from them due to the lack of solidarity he feels because he does not know their personal
experiences. (Whitman 4).

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Whitman makes sure to connect the order of the poem with the ebb and flow of the
ocean, introducing the first of many dualities to follow. The first section of Crossing Brooklyn
Ferry is intimate as the speaker is focusing on his connection with not only those on the same
ferry boat and the surrounding landscape, but all the people who have ever been passengers on
the ferry and shared the same experience as the speaker, even though he is not personally aware
of their feelings. This mirrors the tide rolling in close to the shore, or the flow, because of the
admitted connection. In the second section, the speakers central point is the simple, compact,
well-joind scheme and the similitude of the past and those of the future, or lifes bigger,
interconnected picture, more simply stated (Whitman 7-8). The speaker is detached from the
people sharing the same ferry and is more concerned with a greater, undefined purpose, just as
the ebbing waves are pulled towards the vast and unknown ocean. Whitman continues to echo
the oceans duality by constructing the lines of section two to reflect the ebb and flow of the
ocean that his speaker travels over. Whitman begins lines six through twelve, with the and
lines thirteen through sixteen begin with others. Each line begins in the same place, but ends
up drifting apart into different images of the water and sun surrounding the ferry, like each wave
crashing on the shore, falling back, and divulging separately into the ocean.
The third section of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is the turning point in which M.H. Abrams
predicts that the landscape evokes a varied but integral process of memory, thought,
anticipation, and feeling. It is in this section where the speaker begins to formulate his
conjecture about each humans experience being intertwined and relevant to every other persons
experiences, after meditating upon the natural beauty of the landscape. Lines thirty-three to
forty-eight are bursting at the seams with imagery of white sails of schooners and sloops,

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sailors at the work in the rigging, and scallop-edged waves (Whitman 38-39, 44). The
catalogued imagery is so detailed and significant because the speaker has realized that all ferry
passengers past, present, and future, has seen and will see what he sees. The speaker understands
that because all humans share the same general experiences, but at this point, he is not quite sure
what the commonalities mean. However, this realization is still massive and lends itself not only
to the idea of human unity, but it also establishes the duality and coexistence between the past
and the future. As the speaker describes the setting sun, the tone changes from exhilarating
excitement to a threatening darkness. Fires burning high and glaringly into the night coupled
with black contrasted with wild red and yellow light create a menacing image that expressly
juxtaposes the image of centrifugal spokes of light in the sunlit water (Whitman 47-48, 33).
The juxtaposition of both the tone and imagery suggests a third duality that exists in everyday
life: light and darkness.
The speaker begins to accept the very real light and darkness that exist, connects it to the
duality of the past and the future, and even brings a new duality between the himself and the
reader in section six of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. The dark, brooding tone is still palpable as the
speaker consoles the reader it is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, but the rhythm is
much quicker as the speaker discusses his most human faults like having blabbd, blushd,
resented, lied, stole, [and] grudgd (Whitman 65,72). The fast paced rhythm suggests that the
speaker is genuinely upset at his reprehensible actions and he has worked himself up into a
frenzy over his misgivings. It is also important to note that the tense changes in the middle of
section six, implying that the faults catalogued in the past tense, up to line 73, are relative to the
speaker while the faults listed in present tense, like refusals, hates, postponements, meanness,

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[and] laziness are more central to the reader (Whitman 77). This change in tense is no accident
because it indicates that the human condition is one of doubt and regret and because both the
reader and the speaker have experienced it, the bond between them is strengthened.
Sections seven and eight of the poem are comprised of the speaker asking rhetorical
questions, inquiring to himself or an absent human auditor, as Abrams noted. The speaker
wonders with a quizzical tone if there is anything more beautiful than the mast-hemmd
Manhattan, the scallop-edgd waves of flood-tide, and the sea-gulls oscillating their
bodies (Whitman 92-94). These questions remained unanswered to emphasize the fact that it
would be impossible to dignify such a picturesque scene with words that will inevitably fall
short. With lighter imagery, comes a lighter tone, intimating a shift in how the speaker views the
landscape, suggesting that he did not find the same majesty in the scenery as he does now. The
speaker continues to question what connects himself to the woman or man that looks in [his]
face (Whitman 96). This question is significant because he is now fully aware of the connection
between himself and his fellow human beings and desperately wishes to define it. This question
illustrates his growth as a person and starts to conclude his journey from his past, withdrawn self
to his future, accepting self. Another significant part of section is the repetition of imagery. The
river, sunset, scallop-edgd waves, flood-tide, and sea-gulls have all made appearances at both
the beginning and the end of the poem and Whitman planned their placement before the
speakers grand epiphany tactfully. The landscape has facilitated the the speakers change from
withdrawn, selfishness to pure and total acceptance and love and it is visible through his tone
regarding the same images. Their placement once again illuminates the connection between the
past and present and the effect it has on the speaker, enlightening him so he has a firm grasp and

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deeper understanding of not only himself, but the underlying fundamental truths of the world, as
well.
At the beginning of section nine, the last section of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the speaker
has an idealistic and fresh tone, mirroring the excited tone he had from the beginning of the
poem. The speaker repeats the same words from section three almost verbatim. He is once again
leaning over the ferrys rail, seeing the sun throw spokes of light and create a crown around his
head, and watching the birds fly over the water, but with a new and imperative tone, as though he
has a new lust for life after discovering the essence of being. The once menacing images of the
contrast between fires, foundry chimneys and black shadows at nightfall are no longer
sinister and the tone is no longer hostile because the speaker accepts and acknowledges the
darkness because he knows that the light comes along with it (Whitman 119).
Another important aspect of section nine is the cessation of the use of contractions.
Abrams said of great romantic lyrics, the speaker would use the common vernacular and
eventually ease into formal speech. Sections one through six of the poem are fraught with
contractions such as lookd, walkd, receivd, and calld. The use of contractions decreases
drastically in section seven and only one contraction is utilized in section nine. The more the
speaker understands and the deeper the truths he discovers, the fewer contractions are used. The
speaker becomes a higher, enlightened being and it is shown directly on the page as Whitman
intertwines the structure of the poem with the meaning of the poem.
The speaker vocalizes his epiphany in the last lines of Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. As the
ferry connects Brooklyn and Manhattan, each duality is whole because each human and
passenger create a piece of the whole to create harmony and there is perfection (Whitman

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130). The speaker uses words like we and us in solidarity which strengthens the connection
he has with not only the ferry passengers of the past, present, and future, but with the world as a
whole. The speaker has become cognizant of all of the differences that exist between humans, the
dualities of light and darkness, past and future, speaker and reader, and the ebb and flow of the
ocean. The speaker declares we use you, and do not cast you aside - we plant you permanently
within us because he realizes that, despite the small differences, all humans are united in the
shared experience of being human to the very core (Whitman 129). The last two lines read you
furnish your parts toward eternity, great or small, you furnish your parts toward the
soul (Whitman 131-132). This word choice of the soul is very particular because it illustrates
the greater purpose of connectedness and conveys that there is only one soul that connects
everything; the reader and the speaker, from the past to the present, in both the light and the
darkness.