Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist, famous for his major poetry collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 and revised multiple times before his death in 1892 (the first edition consisted of only 12 poems; the final edition contained nearly 400). The collection represents a celebration of Whitman’s philosophy of life and humanity, and focuses on nature and the individual human’s role in it, rather than focusing on religious or spiritual matters.
Most of Whitman’s poems are written in free verse and neither rhyme nor follow standard rules for meter and line length. If that was controversial to the purist, so was his use of explicit sexual imagery, and his collection was lambasted at the time (though championed by influential figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau). Over time, however, the collection has infiltrated popular culture and became recognized as one of the central works of American poetry.
In the 1989 film Dead Poets Society (set in 1959), Robin Williams’ English teacher John Keating advocates doing away with the restrictions of poetic rules in order to give creativity free rein. He encourages his students to “make your life extraordinary” and “seize the day” and incites them to rip out the page on dry poetic rules from their textbooks. His unorthodox teaching methods inevitably attract the attention of strict headmaster Gale Nolan, who contrives to remove the heretic. As Mr Keating enters the classroom to collect his belongings, the inspired students express their solidarity by climbing on to their desks and quoting the opening line from Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! (though ironically this poem does rhyme).
During the American Civil War, Whitman, a staunch Unionist, had worked in hospitals caring for the wounded, and his poetry often focused on both loss and healing. O Captain! My Captain! was written in response to the death of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, and who had been assassinated in April 1865 just as his great work was coming to fruition. The three-stanza poem uses a ship and its dead captain as a metaphor for the Unionist cause and Lincoln himself.
Ezra Pound called Whitman “America’s poet…He is America”. Well, let’s hear the poem recited and then let’s enjoy the emotional power of that final scene in Dead Poets Society.
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.
