Late Ferry Notes : Robert Grey

The Late ferry

“Late ferry” by Robert gray, is a poem about a person watching a ferry move across a harbour in Sydney. The poem relates to dreams are reality as dreams can be identified as extensions of reality, the ferry and the harbour described in the text have been imbued with additions to augment reality with imaginary aspects.

The poet does this by using various metaphors and similes such as “The tomato stake patch”, and “amongst a silvery blizzard of light”. Metaphors such as this add a hyper-descriptive quality to the text, to not only show the reader of what the poet sees when he looks at the harbour, but show the reader what the poet is thinking when he looks at the harbour.

Beside metaphors and similes the poet makes extensive use of imagery such as the frequent use of colours which create a twilight effect. “Dark harbour”, “Orange lights”, “Neon redness”, “Silvery blizzard”, and “Yellow light” are all examples of this usage of colour.

The final stanza presents the reader with a feeling of irony, This is delivered by the lines “The ferry wades now into the broad open harbour to be lost soon amongst a silvery blizzard of light” and the lines “I’ll loose sight of the ferry soon, I can see it while its on darkness”, as he can see the ferry when it is floating in darkness. But when it approaches light it becomes lost in the luminescence of it. This further relates to dreams and reality, as it appears to extend the imaginary component of the poem, and then ties it back to reality with the usage of irony.

The poem as a whole provides the insight on dreams and reality as it shows the poet, Robert gray turning a fairly ordinary scene into a very different scene, imbued with imaginary aspects and descriptions which would hardly suit the scene naturally, but in the poem work to change the atmosphere of the scene into an extraordinary one.

Robert gray is uses this style of writing in “flames and dangling wire” also as he turns what is seen as a...