Abeka American Literature Test 12 Practice

Walt Whitman wrote O Captain! My Captain! This famous elegy was composed in 1865 as a tribute to President Abraham Lincoln after his assassination, and it reflects Whitman’s broader themes of democracy, leadership, and mourning. The ship-and-captain metaphor mirrors the nation’s journey and Lincoln’s role as its leader, a hallmark of Whitman’s poetry in Leaves of Grass. The other writers listed are known for very different work—Riley for rustic, sentimental verse; Lew Wallace for novels like Ben-Hur; Bradbury for science fiction—so they don’t fit as the author of this poem.