Composition

When analyzing a poem like “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman, you can start by looking at both its outer composition (stanzas, verses, graphical expression) and inner composition (beginning, subdivision, course). 

Outer composition

“O Captain! My Captain!” is a three-stanza poem. Each of the stanzas is organized graphically in an interesting way. Though the stanzas are octets, made of 8 lines or verses, the first four lines are longer, and the last four are shorter and written with an indentation. This makes the last four lines of the stanzas read like a chorus or a refrain.

But O heart! heart! heart!
the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead  (ll. 5-8)

Some lines rhyme in couplets, two by two, yet the rhyme is not always perfect, including slant rhymes like ‘bells-trills’, for example ...