Walt Whitman wrote the poem “O Captain! My Captain!” in 1865 in response to US President Abraham Lincoln’s death. The poem was the most well-liked one written by Whitman during his lifetime and was the first to be included in an anthology after it was published. It is one of Whitman’s four poems commemorating Lincoln’s death, along with “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” “Hush’d Be the Camps To-Day,” and “This Dust Was Once the Man.”

Whitman relocated to Washington, D.C. during the American Civil War, where he worked for the government and volunteered at hospitals. Whitman wrote poetry in the evenings on the atrocities of the war and the soldiers’ camaraderie. Whitman was captivated by Abraham Lincoln’s weathered visage and lowly beginnings and even though he had never met the President, Whitman was deeply touched by Lincoln’s assassination. November 4, 1865 saw the first publication of “My Captain” in The Saturday Press. Later that year, it was included in Sequel to Drum-Taps. Later, he read the poem at multiple lectures on Lincoln’s passing and placed it in the collection Leaves of Grass.

The poem starts with:

“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;

Whitman was in New York City at the time of Lincoln’s murder. Startled by the catastrophe, he picked up a pen and used the only method he knew to write about his pain. In his mind, Lincoln was a ship who perished at the end of a perilous journey. During Whitman’s lifetime, the poem “Oh Captain, My Captain” rose to greater fame than any of his previous compositions. He delivered presentations on the significance of Lincoln’s death to jam-packed auditoriums in New York City years later, concluding each with a poem.

O Captain! My Captain!

BY WALT WHITMAN

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.