"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is a poem by Walt Whitman, and is part of his collection Leaves of Grass. It describes the ferry trip across the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn at the exact location that was to become the Brooklyn Bridge.
The poem specifically addresses future readers who will look back on it, and the ferry ride, years hence. In the first stanza, Whitman writes:
"And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose."
