Late Ferry Comentary

Late Ferry, a quatrain poem written by Robert Gray, concerns the poet, observing the long sight of a ferry leaving the bay, going towards the city as it wades under the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, fading away into the night. The poet has made the ferry the main idea of the poet, vividly describing the different effects of lighting on and around the ferry.

In this poem, Robert Gray has portrayed the image of the light effect on the ferry in each quatrain throughout the poem as being the setting around the ferry. Gray used only a specific type of figure of speech, simile, in his stanzas to implement the impact of light around the ferry.

In the first stanza, the poet has introduced the ferry as its first stage of departure, as he witnesses from his balcony. “I stay to watch from the balcony, as it goes up onto the huge dark harbour…” introducing the concept of light, the poet indicated that the ferry began at the dark part of the harbour, leaving the wooden jetty.

Continuing from the first stanza, the poet established the idea of light as the ferry began to move towards the city. As the ferry travels along the early stages of the harbour, the street lights “florescence over the dark water” is reflecting on the water. Here the poet has given the simile: “like chromosomes untying and dividing” where the poet has given a image of the water ripples, untying and dividing like the chromosomes at the stage of mitosis (cell division).

As the poet starts his fourth stanza, he uses the simile: “…the tomato stake patch of the yachts, with their orange lights; …” Here the poet describes the next stage of the journey of the ferry that he witnesses as it passes through the yachts, being in a patch, grouped together, as the stakes are metaphorically the masks of the yachts.

Progressing with the effect of light, the poet uses an effective simile to indicate the spreading of the light from the environment around the ferry, as it passes under the Bridge. “the longer white...