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.
“O Captain! My Captain!” is an elegy written by Walt Whitman in 1865 to commemorate the death of President Abraham Lincoln. It was first published in Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865), a collection of Whitman’s poems inspired by the events of the American Civil War. The poem is perhaps Whitman’s most famous—which is ironic, since it is far more conventional in meter, form, and subject than much of Whitman’s other work. Although some critics have suggested that Whitman regretted ever writing “O Captain! My Captain!” it undeniably captured the mood of a nation in mourning and has remained one of Whitman’s best-loved and most-quoted poems.
Summary
Oh Captain, my Captain! Our hard journey is over. The ship has survived every storm, and we’ve won the prize we've been fighting for. The port is close by and I hear bells ringing and people celebrating. All their eyes are on the steady ship, that bold and brave vessel. But oh, my heart! heart! heart! Oh, look at the drops of blood on the deck where my captain is lying cold and dead.
Oh Captain, my Captain! Get up and listen to the bells. Get up—they're waving the flag for you—they’re playing the bugle for you. They’ve brought bouquets and wreaths with ribbons for you—all these people are crowding on the shore for you. The swaying crowd is calling for you, and all the people's eager faces turning towards you. Here Captain! My dear father! I'll put my arm under your head. I must be dreaming that on the deck, you're lying cold and dead.
My Captain isn’t answering me. His lips are pale and unmoving. My father doesn’t feel my arm beneath his head, since he has no pulse or consciousness. The ship has anchored safely, and its journey is over. After this hard journey, the victorious ship has returned with its prize. Let the crowds celebrate and the bells ring! Meanwhile I, slowly and sadly, walk across the deck where my Captain is lying cold and dead.
Themes
Victory and Loss
Even as the poem “O Captain! My Captain!” celebrates the end of the American Civil War, it is also an elegy for President Abraham Lincoln. Victory and loss are thus closely intertwined throughout the poem. On the one hand, its mourning is tempered with joyful reminders that the war is won. Its celebrations, on the other hand, are haunted by melancholy. In this sense, Whitman’s poem illuminates the lingering pain and trauma of losses sustained in war—as well as the impossibility of ever separating the triumph of victory from its human costs.
In its juxtaposition of the language of loss and victory, “O Captain! My Captain!” uses poetic form to model the close relationship between triumph and pain. At first, it seems as if this will be a poem celebrating the victory of the Union in the Civil War. The speaker congratulates President Lincoln on steering the metaphorical ship of state through “every wrack,” i.e. storm, and declares that “the prize we sought is won.” However, halfway through this triumphant first stanza, the speaker breaks off: “But O heart! heart! heart! ... my Captain lies, / Fallen cold and dead.” The sudden appearance of a qualification—"But O heart!”—reveals to the reader that not all is well. The poem scarcely has time to celebrate triumph before facing loss.
One of the poem’s painful ironies is that its celebrations are intended to honor the leader who won this victory, yet President Lincoln is not there to witness the triumph. This is made all the starker by the joyous scenes that begin each stanza: there are ringing bells, “bouquets,” “wreaths,” and cheering crowds. The poem juxtaposes these moments of vibrancy and happiness with the body of the “Captain”, which is “cold,” “dead,” “pale,” and “still.”
The speaker also emphasizes that all of these celebrations are for President Lincoln with the repetition of the word “you”—“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 poet repeats five times. The repetition of the word further underscores the poignancy of Lincoln’s absence from his own celebration.
Even small formal features like the poem’s punctuation register the tension between celebration and mourning, as the speaker’s emotions descend from joy to grief. For example, the exclamation points after “O Captain!” in the first stanza seem like enthusiastic celebrations of victory. Later in the poem, however, the meaning of the exclamation points begins to subtly change. “O heart!” becomes an exclamation of grief and dismay. The exclamation points after “O Captain!” in the second stanza take on even darker connotations, since it’s now clear that the speaker is addressing a dead man rather than a living leader. The five total exclamation points in this stanza take on a desperate quality, as if the speaker is begging the fallen leader to come back to life again. By the final stanza, there is only a single exclamation point, marking the poem’s newly restrained tone of quiet grief. The speaker acknowledges that the world around him is celebrating—"Exult O shores, and ring O bells!”—but he walks with “mournful tread,” grieving even as the country rejoices.
Throughout, the speaker dramatizes the painfully close relationship between loss and victory. The celebration of the Union’s triumph is reframed by the reminder that the country has paid a dear price. Whitman seems to argue that loss and victory are closely linked in all wartime settings, where victory always requires the expenditure of human life.
Grief and Isolation
Each stanza of “O Captain! My Captain!” pivots between public celebration and private grief. In this way, the poem foregrounds the tension between outward emotional expression and internal emotional experience. The speaker must reconcile his personal grief for President Lincoln, whom he seems to regard as a paternal figure, with the wider grief—and joy—of the nation. Through these tensions, Whitman suggests that deep grief for a loved one can be an isolating force that makes loss even more painful than it might otherwise be.
The tension between collective experience and private emotion is implied even in the title of the poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” The speaker compares President Lincoln to the captain of a ship and then refers to him as my captain, emphasizing his own personal connection to the president. The poem is not titled “Our Captain”; rather, the speaker seems to feel that President Lincoln is his captain in particular. Logically, the captain of a ship is indeed everyone’s captain, but the poet’s choice to emphasize the personal pronoun makes the loss seem private and personal rather than public.
The public celebrations that accompany the return of the ship into the harbor—metaphorically standing in for the victory of the Union in the Civil War—are a shared experience of joy. By contrast, the speaker’s experience of grief is private and solitary. The descriptions of the crowds give the impression of a shared public experience. The “people” are “all exulting”; they are “a-crowding” and form a “swaying mass” on the shore. They seem to have become a kind of collective, feeling together and expressing themselves as one body.
On the other hand, the depiction of the speaker himself emphasizes his isolation and solitary melancholy. Although he “hear[s] … the bells,” he ignores them and walks alone, “with mournful tread.” The poem presents an experience of collective rejoicing, but the speaker chooses to physically and emotionally separate himself from the crowd. The isolated nature of the speaker’s grief seems to result from his perception of his relationship with Lincoln. That is, his mourning seems to transcend the sorrow of a citizen for the assassination of a leader to become more like that of a son for his father. Indeed, the speaker repeatedly refers to President Lincoln as “father.”
The poem’s final stanza thus introduces another layer of emotional complexity, as the speaker’s grief becomes yet more private and personal in contrast to the rejoicing of the crowds. The speaker admits that “[m]y father does not feel my arm” and “he has no pulse,” implying that the speaker has physically touched and shaken the body to feel for a pulse. This gesture is highly private and intimate, more like a familial relationship than that of a citizen and a leader. It’s clear that the speaker feels so strongly about the fallen leader that he experiences a close, almost paternal relationship with him. The fact that the speaker’s intense, private grief contrasts so sharply with the cheering crowds suggests that losing a loved one can create a painful boundary between an individual and other people.
The Individual vs. the Nation
“O Captain! O Captain!” depicts the overwhelming grief and trauma that followed one of the most notorious political assassinations in United States history. At the same time, it suggests that the nation will move on and even thrive after the loss of its leader. In doing so, the poem interrogates the relationship between the individual and the wider political community, ultimately suggesting that the United States as a nation is a political project that can and must transcend the life of any single person—even though individuals are still very important.
The poem’s extended metaphor compares President Lincoln to a captain steering the “ship of state”— guiding the Union through the Civil War. However, the “captain” of the title turns out to be less essential to the continuing success and unity of the nation than it might initially seem. At first it seems like the “captain,” President Lincoln, is solely responsible for the safe return of the ship after it has “weather’d every rack,” that is, survived every storm and finally made it home. But the poem also hints that this is not entirely the case: even in the first stanza, the speaker refers to the voyage as “our fearful trip,” implying that the community has survived these trials by banding together and assuming shared responsibility.
The idea that President Lincoln might not be entirely essential to the nation’s victory becomes clearer when the citizens continue to rejoice after their captain has fallen. Even while the “Captain lies / Fallen cold and dead,” the people celebrate victory with bugles, bells, and public commemorations. Their grief at the assassination of the president does not stop them from continuing their celebrations and moving on with life. Although the speaker claims that the celebrations are “for you [i.e. President Lincoln],” this starts to look more like wishful thinking as the poem continues. The people don’t seem to require the physical presence of President Lincoln in order to celebrate; the commemoration of the Union’s victory takes on a life of its own, persisting as a community celebration even without the presence of a leader to direct it.
However, this emphasis on communal strength is complicated by the speaker’s own ambivalent relationship to the crowds that await the ship’s arrival. He seems to feel that he has little in common with them, since his grief alienates him from the general mood of celebration. This contrast shows how meaningful individuals (like the fallen “Captain”) are within collective efforts, even if those efforts can still succeed without them. Each stanza of the poem is split between the first four lines, which generally depict communal scenes of rejoicing, and the final four lines, which typically feature expressions of the speaker’s personal grief. This consistent divide suggests that the speaker still feels a great deal of individual pain at the loss of his leader, despite the joy of his broader community. The speaker even chooses to remain on board the ship while the communal celebrations go on. The bells ring and the “shores … exult,” but he chooses to “walk the deck my Captain lies,” alone. This physical separation reinforces the significance of the loss of the captain.
While the nation manages to move forward without President Lincoln, the speaker can’t quite join in the celebrations—the loss of his leader is still agonizing, even though the nation has survived. Ultimately, the poem seems to argue that collectivity is necessary for the survival of the United States, but it also acknowledges that individual people play crucial roles within this collective effort.
오 캡틴! 마이 캡틴
아 선장님! 나의 선장이시여! 섬뜩한 항해는 끝이 났고,
배는 모든 고난을 견뎌내었으며 우리가 찾던 보배 또한 얻어냈습니다.
항구에 가까우니, 종소리는 기꺼웁고, 사람들은 환호합니다.
굳건한 용골과 완강하며 담대한 선척을 눈으로 좇으면서 말입니다.
그러면서도, 아 가슴이 가슴은 가슴엔!
선장께선 싸늘히, 죽음에 쓰러지셔,
그가 누우신 그 갑판 위에는,
아, 떨궈지는 붉은 방울방울이.
아 선장! 나의 선장이시여! 일어나시어 종소리를 들으십사,
일어나시어, 당신을 위해 깃발은 나부끼고 나팔을 울리니,
당신을 위해 꽃과 매듭으로 화관이, 해안가의 무리가 지어졌고,
당신을 위해 그들이 부르고 다함께 손흔들며, 열렬한 면면들이 요동치오니,
자 선장님! 친애하는 어버이시여!
이 팔로 당신 머리를 받치우나,
그것은 갑판 위의 덧없는 꿈.
당신께선 이미 싸늘히, 죽음에 쓰러지셨네.
입술은 창백해 미동도 없으니 내 선장께선 답이 없으시며,
맥박은 조용코 의식도 없으니 내 어버이 받친 팔, 의미가 없음이라.
배는 탈없게 무사히 닻내리고 그 항해는 다다라 끝나며,
섬뜩한 항해서 승리한 배는 얻어낸 전리품과 함께 돌아온다.
해안가여, 환호하라! 쇠북이여, 울리거라!
해도 나는 비애에 젖은 발걸음으로,
선장께서 싸늘히, 죽음에 쓰러지셔,
누우신 그 갑판 위를 거니르리라.
미국 시인 월트 휘트먼의 시. 영화 죽은 시인의 사회에 나온 것으로 유명하며, 시라는 걸 모를지라도 O captain! My Captain! 이라는 구절은 매우 유명하다.
독일 출신의 미국 작곡가 쿠르트 바일이 작곡한 Four Whitman's song 그 두 번째 곡이다. 월트 휘트먼의 시에 노래를 입혔다.
이 시는 표면적으로는 한 선장의 죽음을 노래하고 있지만, 그 진짜 의미는 암살당한 에이브러햄 링컨 대통령을 추모하는 것이다.
배가 고난의 원정에서 마지막 위대한 승리를 거두고 열렬한 환영을 받으며 항구로 돌아왔지만, 그 모든 영광의 주인공인 선장은 자신을 향한 사람들의 환호성과 선원의 간절한 외침도 듣지 못하는 싸늘한 주검이 되어 누워 있다는 내용은 남북전쟁을 북부의 승리로 이끌었지만 전쟁이 끝난 지 얼마 되지도 않아 암살자의 흉탄에 생을 마감하고 만 링컨을 비유적으로 표현하고 있다.