O Captain! My Captain!

Walt Whitman · 1865 CE · Poem · Modern / American · Romantic

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize sought is won, the port is near and the bells and the exultant people are all waiting on the shore, while on the deck a voice calls to a captain who does not answer. Three eight-line stanzas in regular rhyme and metre, almost the only conventional verse Whitman ever printed. Schoolchildren recited it for a century, and he came to say he was almost sorry he had written it.

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