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.
2
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
Supporters of Lincoln are imagined as an “eager” crowd on shore, awaiting the Captain’s arrival. 
 Though many Union supporters, including freed slaves, embraced their President as a hero at the end of the war, the national mood even in the North was more divided and complex than Whitman suggests. Historian Sarah Pruitt  describes  the scene of Lincoln’s final speech: 
 
 A cheering, singing crowd of hundreds gathered on the White House lawn, with rolls of intense applause greeting Lincoln’s appearance at the window of the second-floor balcony in the North Portico. The president waited several minutes for the din to subside…. 
 Lincoln had prepared this speech carefully. Though he began on a joyful note—“We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace”—and promised a day of “national thanksgiving” he proceeded directly to a reminder that the nation now faced a task “fraught with great difficulty,” that of “re-inauguration of the national authority—reconstruction.” 
 The formerly jubilant crowd fell silent as Lincoln delivered his remarks, which were far from the celebratory address they had expected. [History.com] 

O Captain My Captain