4

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

1

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!

On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home,

are more curious to me than you suppose,

5And 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-join’d 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,

10The 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,

15Others 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

20It avails not, time nor place—distance 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 refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I

was refresh’d,

25Just 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-stemm’d

pipes of steamboats, I look’d.

I too many and many a time cross’d 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,

30Saw 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,

Look’d at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my head in

the sunlit water,

Look’d on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,

35Look’d on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,

Look’d 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,

40The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine

pennants,

The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their