In the poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" by Walt Whitman, there are many recurring images and motifs that can be seen. Whitman develops these images throughout the course of the poem. The most dominant of these are the linear notion of time, playing roles, and nature. By examining these motifs and tracing their development, one's understanding of the poem becomes intensely deepened. Whitman destroys the linear subsistence of time by connecting past with future. This can be seen in the first stanza, as the poem opens: "And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations than you might suppose"(4-5). This lets the reader know that Whitman has written this with the reader in mind, even before that reader existed. He challenges time by connecting his time with ours. He has predicted us reading this poem. When we read Whitman's words, we are connected to his vision and his feelings during the time of his existence. In a way, time and space are warped so that while reading this poem they don't exist as they do in reality. He is undoubtedly confident that after he is gone the water will still run and people will still "see the shipping of Manhattan/and the heights of Brooklyn" (14-15). He makes his past and our future all one. No matter neither the time nor the distance, the reader will have an experience similar to what Whitman experiences at the moment in time in which he resides: 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" (23-26).
