Comparing Dickinson And Whitman's Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Whitman and Dickinson are very different in their poetry styles. Both authors break their writing into stanzas; blocks of lines similar to paragraphs in poetry. Dickinson is fond of quatrains or stanzas of four lines whereas Whitman ranges from 5 to 29 lines per stanza.
Whitman (1856/2013), uses imagery in a lengthy description on how he feels connected to the other passengers on the ferry in his poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. “It avails not, time nor place – distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence, 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 once of a crowd” (p. 1070).
He feels connected to the other people that have in the past and will in the future ride the ferry on their commute home from work. It seems to me that the purpose of writing this poem is to relate that people are just part of the process of time. His message is, in the end, time doesn’t really matter; we are all united in our common experience of life.
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us? Whatever it is, it avails not – distance avails not, and place avails not” (Whitman, 1856/2013, p. 1071).
I feel Whitman is successful in his message to his readers. I know I have had moments when I have stopped, and I have thought about how small an insignificant my life is in the scheme of things. I believe he wrote a beautiful poem to share his moment of insight. Dickinson uses metaphors for comparisons in her much shorter writings. In, “I taste a liquor never brewed”, Dickinson (1861/2013) utilizes intoxication as a metaphor for how much she enjoys the glories of life and nature. She uses liquor or drunkenness in each stanza of her poem. “Inebriate of air – am I – And Debauchee of Dew- Reeling – thro’ endless summer days