Summary

The poem begins with the unnamed speaker, presumably a sailor, calling directly to his captain with the famous lines, “O Captain! My Captain!” (1). The speaker describes their ship’s triumphant return to shore after “The ship has weather’d every rack” and “the prize we sought is won” (2). The return is seemingly a celebratory one, involving victorious “bells” and “people all exulting” (4). However, the speaker reveals the true, tragic fate of his Captain at the end of the first stanza: “on the deck my Captain lies, / Fallen cold and dead” (7-8).

The speaker continues his focus on his Captain, calling out, “O Captain! My Captain!” once again (9). He mentions how all the ecstatic congratulations, “the flag,” “the bugle trills,” the “bouquets,” the “ribbon’d wreaths,” “the shores a-crowding,” and “the swaying mass” with “eager faces turning” are actually mostly meant for his Captain in...