"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won..." O'Captain, My Captain is an extended matephor written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln . The work was popular and critically well received on publication, soon becoming Whitman's first to be anthologized as well as the most popular during his lifetime. It was one of the four poems he wrote about the death of the president, alongside When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd , Hush'd Be the Camps To-day , and This Dust was Once the Man . Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.