{
 "id": "walt-whitman/aboard-at-a-ships-helm",
 "title": "Aboard at a Ship’s Helm",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Walt Whitman",
 "poet_slug": "walt-whitman",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Leaves of Grass",
 "book_slug": "leaves-of-grass",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 106,
 "container": "Sea-Drift",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1867,
  "venue": "Leaves of Grass (New York, 1867)",
  "note": "Located in this edition by matching this text's lines against the Whitman Archive transcription of the 1867 Chapin edition (ppp.00473). The corpus text follows the 1891–92 arrangement, by which the poem had been revised. First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00473"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/walt-whitman_leaves-of-grass",
  "file": "sea-drift.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1322",
   "https://archive.org/details/leavesgrass03whitgoog"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 11,
  "n_stanzas": 5,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 85,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Aboard at a ship’s helm,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A young steersman steering with care.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "An ocean-bell⁠—O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her gray sails,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gayly and safe.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But O the ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}