Whitman's Calvary Crossing a Ford

Imagery refers to language used to communicate a visual picture or impression of a person, place, or thing. Images are usually defined as either fixed or free. "Fixed images," also sometimes called "concrete images," are specific and detailed enough so as to leave little to the reader's imagination. In contrast, free images are more general and depend upon the reader to provide specificity. In Cavalry Crossing a Ford, for example, Whitman provides a series of images (both fixed and free) to present for the reader the larger picture of the cavalry troop. He writes of the "silvery river" and "the splashing horses loitering . . . to drink," as well as the image of sunlight glinting off the "brown-faced" cavalry soldiers' guns. The culmination of these "images," then, is the larger "image" of the cavalry as a whole.