O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Commentary
And rounding out the ‘old favourites’ theme…
This is one of the poems that I read and enjoyed as a child, but which lost its appeal somewhat with age and familiarity. However, I recently came across the following piece of background info, of which I was entirely unaware - quoting from a note on the poem:
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater is too familiar a story for me to rehash here. In a nation numbed by death in the just-ended War, this death was the more deeply felt. Whitman felt a deep personal grief, and he shows it in another well-known poem ‘When lilacs last at the dooryard bloomed’1. In [O Captain, my Captain], though, he captures the mass mood. – Bob Blair
Which epiphany should be sufficient commentary on the poem - for Whitman-related stuff, see Poem #54
— Martin