O Captain! My Captain!

Written by Walt Whitman

Narrated by LibriVox Community

LibriVox volunteers bring you 18 recordings of "O Captain! My Captain!" This was the Weekly Poetry for the week of August 17, 2014.

"O Captain! My Captain!" is an elegy for Abraham Lincoln written by Walt Whitman, who worked as a clerk and army hospital nurse during the Civil War. The Captain of the poem is Lincoln, and the ship represents the United States, brought safely through the storm of war. In the poem, Whitman juxtaposes the people's joy at the end of the war with his grief at the assassination of the President. (Summary by Laurie Anne Walden)

• Language: English
• Publisher: LibriVox
• Release date: Aug 25, 2014

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was born in Long Island on the 31st May 1819 to Walter Whitman, a carpenter and farmer, and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. Walt was one of eight siblings and was taken out of school at the age of eleven to start work, but he continued to read voraciously and visit museums. He worked first as a printer, then briefly as a teacher before settling on a career in journalism. He self-published the first version of Leaves of Grass, which consisted of only twelve poems, in 1855. By the time he died in 1892, and despite arousing considerable controversy, he enjoyed unprecedented international success and to this day is considered to be one of America’s greatest poets.