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 ribboned 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 anchored 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.

Walt Whitman [1819-1892]

"WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE DOORYARD

BLOOMED"
I

WHEN lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed,

And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night,

I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.

II

O powerful western fallen star!

O shades of night-O moody, tearful night!

O great star disappeared-O the black murk that hides the

star!

fe-(for well, dear brother, I know to sing thou wouldst surely die).

V

pring, the land, amid cities,

h old woods, where lately the violets bund, spotting the gray debris,

elds each side of the lanes, passing the

eared wheat, every grain from its -brown fields uprisen,

blows of white and pink in the or

Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.

VI

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land,

With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped

in black,

With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veiled

women standing,

With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the

night,

With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,

With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber

faces,

With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,

With all the mournful voices of the dirges poured around

the coffin,

The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs-where amid these you journey,

With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual clang,

Here, coffin that slowly passes,

I give you my sprig of lilac.

(Nor for you, for one alone,

VII

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,

For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you, O sane and sacred death.

All over bouquets of roses,

O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,

For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)

I understand you,

the lustrous star has detained me, mrade holds and detains me.

X

lf for the dead one there I loved? song for the large sweet soul that

me be for the grave of him I love?

st and west,

sea and blown from the Western

prairies meeting,

the breath of my chant,

him I love.

ΧΙ

O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?

And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?

Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,

With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,

With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,

With the fresh spring herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,

In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,

With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,

And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,

And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.

XII

Lo, body and soul—this land,

My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,

The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,

And ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and

corn.

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,

The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfilled noon,

The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.

XIII

Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird,

Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from

the bushes,

Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.