shore to shore.” And may we not assume that, as he writes the poem, the
mortal poet remains “curious” about his own postmortal destiny?
Whitman again illustrates the proposition that “a vast similitude inter-
locks all” in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by enumerating “the similitudes
of the past and those of the present.” The “impalpable sustenance” that
nourished the persona’s spirit during his mortal tenure appears to be still
nourishing him in his translated state. The sights that inspired him then
still “dazzle” his eye—seagulls weaving effortlessly in the air, shimmering
waves, colorful boats, and the shifting light patterns in the sky and on the
water. Philosophers and poets have often equated truth and beauty, and
if they are right, the persona’s undiminished sensitivity to beauty would
appear to validate the truth of his vision. In his own version of the Great
Chain of Being, Emerson remarks that “a man of thought is willing to
die, willing to live: I suppose because he sees the thread on which the
beads are strung, and perceives that it reaches up and down, existing quite
independently of the present illusions.”^41 In Whitman’s variation of this
trope, the sights and sounds of the varied world that the persona sees
below him become “glories strung like beads” along the golden chain of
being that forever links him to the generations of the living and dead:
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of
the day,
The simple, compact, well-joined 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,
The 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.The river’s “current” conveys Whitman’s duplex vision of time. To the
living, time appears as a series of discrete events. But the presumably
immortal persona perceives time not only as we mortals do but also as the
eternal and immeasurable ®ow of the universe. This double perspective
permits him to comprehend the limitations of the mortal condition and
to reach out to the living while measuring their destinies in terms of
in¤nity. Corliss Lamont points out that the assumption by Platonists,
122 / “The Progress of Souls”