POEM: O Captain! My Captain! (#11 for National Poetry Month in Canada and the US)
Not new, but this struck me as soon as I saw it in a new way. The first Captain of my first Fandom is gone. There with him go all illusions of a rebirth of Blake's 7; never real, I thought, but apparently there all the same.
What will it be like when William Shatner goes to the great holodeck in the sky?
And there is a parallel, because I never really liked Blake; just as I never really liked Kirk. This it seems makes little difference.
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! (From Memories of President Lincoln)
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.
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.
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; Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
And here is the complete poem from Leaves of Grass http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/192
Goddess watch over us all,
Kerk TehKek