Private Grief Versus Public Celebration

Throughout the poem, there is a disconnect between the speaker’s deep despair and the crowd’s expectant celebration on shore. This disconnect stems from the speaker having information that the public lacks. His intimate relationship with his Captain and their enclosure in the same small space has given the speaker access to the Captain on a personal level. As a result, the general public at shore remains clueless about the passing of the Captain and continues “exulting” with “bugle trills,” “bouquets,” “ribbon’d wreaths,” and “eager faces turning" (3-12). The speaker, by contrast, is left alone in “mournful tread” with a pierced heart “bleeding drops of red” (6, 22). While those on shore are in a flurry of celebratory activity, the speaker is left in comparatively heavy stillness and silence, in which the Captain has “Fallen cold and dead,” aboard the ship (8). The...