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Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry


by Walt Whitman

Section 24 Summary


Lines 110-115

Frolic on, crested and scallop-edged waves!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Bully for you! you proud, friendly, free Manhattanese!

  • He pulls a classic poetic trick: addressing the things around him, he orders them to do the things they are already doing. He sounds like the conductor of an orchestra: "Strings, louder! Now trumpets! Drums, I need more drums!"
  • He summons back all the sights and sounds of the ferryboat, often repeating the same language he has used earlier in the poem, like "scallop-edged waves" and "men and women generations after me."
  • Instead of "Manhattan," he uses the Native American word, "Mannahatta" in line 111, emphasizing the legacy and continuity between different peoples.

Lines 116-117

Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!

  • He describes his own brain as "baffled and curious" and "throbbing," and the scenery around him as a scientific specimen, suspended for all time in a "float of solution."

Lines 118-131

Receive the summer-sky, you water! and faithfully hold it, till all downcast eyes have time to take it from you;
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sailed schooners, sloops, lighters!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are;

  • One by one, he marches through the major images of the poem. If the poem were a symphony, this section would be called the "recapitulation." It serves to remind the reader of all that came before.
  • Whereas before he showed things separately, mixed with his own thoughts and commentary, here he combines them into one big picture.

Lines 132-136

You necessary film, continue to envelop the Soul;
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual;

  • These lines return to some of the poem's philosophical themes: that appearances are an indication of a deeper reality, that things are connected by a "necessary film," that nothing is more spiritual than physical reality, and nothing is more eternal than everyday objects.
  • From these lines, one has to wonder with the philosophy of the American Transcendentalists, who believed that there was one big Soul underlying all of nature. Whitman never uses the plural form, "souls," in this poem. He only uses the singular "Soul."

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