Answer and Explanation:
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is the poem by Walt Whitman that made him a pioneer of free verse. Free verse happens when a poem does not follow any rules for meter or rhyme schemes. Let's take a look at the excerpt provided:
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm’d pipes of steamboats, I
look’d.
Each line has a different length, so to speak. It is clear that Whitman had no concern for the number of syllables and the rhythm to be the same in each line. When we look at the last word or sound of the lines, we notice the same lack of concern for them to be similar or equal. We can tell there is the repetition of the phoneme /t/ at the end of each last word, but that is not enough to characterize rhyming. This is why this excerpt is a representative of free verse.