Flood-tide below me!  I watch 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;
  And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence,
    are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you
    might suppose. 
  Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from
    shore to shore;
  Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
  Others 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. 
  It avails not, neither time or place—­distance avails not. 
  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;
  Just 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-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked. 
  I too many and many a time cross’d the river, the sun half
    an hour high;
  I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls—­I saw them high in
    the air, with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
  I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies,
    and left the rest in strong shadow,
  I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging
    toward the south. 
  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;
  The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups,
    the frolicsome crests and glistening;
  The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray
    walls of the granite store-houses by the docks;
  On the neighboring shores, the fires from the foundry chimneys
    burning high ... into the night,
  Casting their flicker of black ... into the clefts of streets. 
  These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you.[J]

    [J] ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’ (abridged).

And so on, through the rest of a divinely beautiful poem.  And, if you wish to see what this hoary loafer considered the most worthy way of profiting by life’s heaven-sent opportunities, read the delicious volume of his letters to a young car-conductor who had become his friend:—­