POEM
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 o 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 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.
- Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was born in Long Island, in the United States of America
in 1819. He started his career as an office boy in a law office in Brooklyn at
the age of eleven and then became a typesetter’s apprentice in a number of
print shops. He took to teaching for some time and started his own newspaper,
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‘the Long Islands’. During 1850-1855 he focussed on his own work, ‘ Leaves
of Grass’ and continued to write. He died at the age of 72.
The poem, ‘O Captain! My Captain’ was published in 1865 and widely
anthologised during his life time. This poem is a rare example of his use of
rhymed, rhythmically regular verse, which serves to create a sombre yet
exalted effect. Whitman had envisioned Abraham Lincoln as an archangel
Captain and he wrote this poem as a dirge for the death of Abraham Lincoln.
The first line of the poem serves to begin the controlling metaphor
upon which the rest of the poem is built. In this poem, ‘Captain’ is a substitute
of Abraham Lincoln, and the ship is the United States of America. ‘The
fearful trip’ is the Civil War. The Speaker celebrates the end of the civil war
but continues to mourn the fallen hero.
Glossary and notes
bleeding drops of red : captain’s bleeding wound and the speaker’s
wounded heart
bells
: bells rung in celebration of victory (they also
symbolise funeral bells)
weathered
: came safely through
dear father
: Lincoln is exalted to the position of father of the
post-slavery nation
exult
: show jubilation (over victory)
tread
: walk softly
trill
: produce a quavering or warbling sound
Comprehension questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Why is the vessel grim and daring?
What has happened to the Captain?
How is the dead Captain received?
What do the following phrases mean?
a) ‘Ship is anchored safe and sound’
b) ‘Voyage closed and done’
c) ‘Prize we sought is won’
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5.
6.
How are the last eight lines different from the previous lines?
Explain the metaphors in the poem.
Appreciation questions:
1.
State symbolically the arrangement of syllables, stressed and unstressed
in each line.
2.
Bring out the significance of the first four long lines and the next four
lines short in each stanza.
3.
How are emotions expressed in the shorter lines of each stanza?
4.
What does a leader leave for his followers?
Parallel reading
Read the given poem that advocates patriotic fervour.
THE SOLDIER
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blost by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
- Rupert Brooke
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