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1. Describe the form of "O Captain! My Captain!"

The poem is an elegy (or dirge), mourning someone's death. It consists of three stanzas made up of double quatrains. These are in a verse-chorus structure in which the verse is rhymed AABB and the shorter lines of the chorus are rhymed CDCD. The dominant meter is iambic, with lines varying in their number of metrical feet.

2. Explain the allegorical nature of the poem's central conceit.

The poem compares Abraham Lincoln to a ship's captain. Whitman's speaker is a sailor grieving the death of the captain, whose ship--analogous to the "ship of state" or United States--has finally made it past the storm--analogous to the Civil War. But ironically, at this triumphant moment when crowds wait to celebrate his victory, the captain has died suddenly and violently, just as Lincoln was assassinated shortly after his victory in the Civil War.

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