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What are some similarities and differences between the poems: "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer," "O Captain! My Captain!," and "I Hear...

One the face of it, these would seem to be very different poems. “Astronomer” is a poem about how nature and intuition is superior to academic knowledge; “I Hear America Singing” is a celebration of American labor, a poem in which Whitman embraces the everyday; “O Captain” of course is the famous elegy for Abraham Lincoln, represented by the beloved captain, who, after guiding the “ship” of the United States through the storm, has fallen before the victory can be celebrated. The tones of the poems are very different as well. In “Astronomer” the poet is “tired and sick” until he is revitalized by the open sky; in “I Hear” he is enthusiastic and celebratory; in “O Captain,” he is passionate and mournful.


As far as similarities go, I think voice and method are two elements that connect them. Different as they are, they are all unmistakably “Whitmanian.” By that I mean that they all share a certain conception of the relationship of the poet to his subject, which can be said to be “inclusive,” I guess. The poet is both part of the subject, and greater than it; he is both personal (Walt, an individual attending an astronomy lecture) and collective (an omniscient poetic “eye,” comprehending all Americans working everywhere), as well as a kind of poetic voice of conscience for the country (in “O Captain, he both plays the grieving son – “My father does not feel my arm” etc. – and, if we understand the poem symbolically, the voice of the grieving nation). 

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