“May we again meet, brother,
On board this boat or other!”
The companion to this little cabinet picture of the boat going with the stream is the crossing of the ferry. The poet offers the ferryman three times his fare, because the spirits of two friends, now dead, who crossed the same ferry with him in past years, are supposed to have gone with him.
THE FERRY.
Many years have passed for ever
Since I came across the river;
Here’s the tower, in evening’s blushing,
There, as erst, the weir is rushing.
Then with me the boat did carry
Two companions o’er the ferry,