Reflection: Calvary Crossing a Ford

The Calvary Crossing a Ford is a poem about a group of soldiers in a battle crossing a river. The poem is very descriptive about the simple task of walking across a river.This kind of goes against Henry David Thoreau because he was not too fond of the government system. He assumed that the military was connected to the government. Thoreau even went as far to call them robots because he thought that they were becoming so automatic. Whitman wrote a whole poem about an army crossing a river(Whitman). Also most of the poems by Thoreau and Emerson during the Transcendentalism period were about self and about one person because the Transcendentalism period valued self worth over intuition(Quinn). During the war that took place in the poem, Walt Whitman was a medic in the army. I think that he probably saw the scene created in the poem multiple times everyday. Like I mentioned before, Thoreau and the other writers from the Transcendentalism period writers did not like the government. Walt Whitman must of had some sort of respect for the government because he technically worked for them. He does not have the same opinions as the other writers of his time because he must have a good feeling about the army and the government. I recall that you, Mr. Langley, mentioned that the style of his writing is going to change in the future. I suppose that his writing is going to become more about self in the later writings that we are going to read. I like Whitman's works a little bit better than Thoreau's and Emerson's because I do not agree with their idea of civil disobedience. Especially the whole idea of hating the army and calling them robots. I mean they are going to fight for your freedoms and they are going to complain about the government's affiliation with the army. Just because they are in the army does not mean that they are robots. They are actually doing a lot of good for our country, fighting for our freedom. It is a little messed up that they could look at people that I have a lot of respect for in that way.


Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Whitman, Walt. "Cavalry Crossing a Ford - Walt Whitman (1819-1892)." Books & Literature Classics. Web. 10 Feb. 2012.