Poets' Corner: O Lieutenant! Drear Lieutenant!

With all of Bush's recent self-comparisons to
Abraham Lincoln and his Civil War travails,
on which see this,
I thought he deserved to have Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!"
rededicated in his honor:
for the original of which see here.

O First Lieutenant! drear Lieutenant! your course is overwrought,
The ship's in wrack and ruin, as well the prize you sought;
The reports are wrong, the bombs you hear are coming closer still,
Your rigid eyes the compass cannot see, nor the rotting of the keel:
O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck our government lies,
Fallen cold as greed.

O Lieutenant! mindless Lieutenant! depart from our dear Capitol;
Depart--for you in flag are blindly clung and cannot see our ills;
For you deceit's a ribbon'd grave--and you our ports are selling,
And you they call, the swaying mass, a cat not worth the belling.
O man of constant AWOL
Incurious and unable,
You dream that somewhere somehowl
You'll restore your cabale.

Of course you do not answer, your lips as usual do stumble;
Where is that secret club when you need its arm, its pulse, its pull?
Your captainship's distress'd and sinking, its voyage nearly done;
On fearful trip, your ancient min'ster comes with shot and birdgun.
Exile to shores of Dubai or tundra'd oil fields!
O you, with mournful deed,
Be gone from the deck where our government lies,
Fallen cold with greed.

Hillel Schwartz, after Walt Whitman