O, Captain! My Captain!

(this poem is dedicated to Abraham Lincoln)

O, Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weathered 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 budge trills!

For you bouquets and ribboned 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 anchored 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.

Vocabulary:

has weathered every rack – has stood the test

a-crowding – crowded

safe and sound – unhurt

COMPREHENSION AND DISCUSSION:

1. Who is the Captain in this poem?
2. What “fearful trip” have the “Captain” and his “ship” been on?
3. The “ship” is nearly in port, and an eager crowd waits to cheer the “Captain”. Why then is the poem’s speaker walking the deck “with mournful tread”?
4. Whitman adds power to this poem of grief in several ways. One is the use of regular rhyme. What is an example of the words that form an end rhyme in the last stanza?
5. In this poem, a ship and its captain are compared to a nation and its President. How is a president like a captain and a nation like a ship? Explain similarities you see.

EMILY DICKINSON

1830 - 1886

Although she wrote nearly 1800 poems, Emily Dickinson was unknown during her lifetime. Emily Dickinson led one of the most prosaic lives of any great poet. At a time when fellow poet Walt Whitman was ministering to the Civil War wounded and traveling across America – a time when America itself was reeling in the chaos of war, the tragedy of the Lincoln assassination, and the turmoil of Reconstruction – Dickinson lived a relatively untroubled life in her father's house.

She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830 to a prominent family well known for their political and educational interaction. She had a normal, lively childhood. She attended Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley but severe homesickness led her to return home after one year. In the years that followed, she seldom left her house and visitors were scarce. The people with whom she did come in contact, however, had an intense impact on her thoughts and poetry. She was particularly stirred by the Reverend Charles Wadsworth, whom she met on a trip to Philadelphia. He left for the West Coast shortly after a visit to her home in 1860, and his departure gave rise to a heartsick flow of verse from Dickinson, who deeply admired him. By the 1860s, she lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world, but actively maintained many correspondences and read widely.

The year 1862 seems to mark a distinct turning point in her life. That year Wadsworth, an older, married man, took a position in California. That same year Dickinson wrote 366 poems, began dressing exclusively in white, and refuses to venture beyond her house and garden.

Her poetry reflects her loneliness and the speakers of her poems generally live in a state of want; but her poems are also marked by the intimate recollection of inspirational moments which are decidedly life-giving and suggest the possibility of future happiness. Her work was heavily influenced by the Metaphysical poets of seventeenth-century England, as well as by her Puritan upbringing and the Book of Revelation. Dickinson was extremely prolific as a poet and regularly enclosed poems in letters to friends, but she was not publicly recognized during her lifetime. The first volume of her work was published posthumously in 1890 and the last in 1955. She died in Amherst in 1886.

Dickinson’s intensely private poems cover a wide range of subjects and emotions. She was fascinated with death, and many of her poems struggle with the contradictions and seeming impossibility of an afterlife. She carries on an argument with God, sometimes expressing faith in him and sometimes denying his existence. She remains one of the most private and cryptic voices in American literature.

During her lifetime, Dickinson published hardly any of her poetry (fewer than ten of her nearly 1,800 poems) and was almost unknown as a writer. After Dickinson's death, her sister discovered her notebooks and published the contents.

Read the poems and answer the question:

How does Dickinson use imagery, sound, and metaphor to tell a story or create an impression?

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