Clareified

Jake Tapper kinda yelled at me yesterday on Twitter.
Though how he even found my tweets, I’ll never know.
The subject matter? He tweeted a three parter about how the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t really free the slaves. This prompted my patented snark that if Tapper is just now realizing that 1. He needs to get his money back from his college and/or high school. 2. Somebody should tell him that despite how it looks to the naked eye, the Earth is actually rotating around the sun. I know, I know, I am awesome. But evidently, it was President Obama’s decision to hang the Emancipation Proclamation in the White House which prompted Tapper’s history lesson. I think. Anyway, in light of all this, I thought this week’s poem should be Walt Whitman’s famous ode to Abraham Lincoln, the writer of the famously misnamed Emancipation. See, Lincoln is the Captain of the ship, aka President of the United States. And once the prize was won, winning the Civil War and reuniting the two halves, poor Captain was shot in the head, fallen cold AND dead! (I personally hate this poem. For petty petty reasons.)

O Captain My Captain by Walt Whitman

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.

2

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.

3

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; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 1:36 am and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.