The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket is an influential poem by Robert Lowell. It was first published in 1946 in his collection Lord Weary's Castle.

The poem is mostly written in a combination of pentameter and trimeter and divided into seven sections. It's dedicated to Lowell's cousin, "Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea." According to the Notes in Lowell's "Collected Poems", "The body of Warren Winslow . . .was never recovered after his Navy destroyer, "Turner", sank from an accidental explosion in New York harbor during World War II."

ections

*The first describes the discovery by a fleet of warships, of a sailor's corpse at sea ('the drowned sailor clutched the drag net') and its reburial with military honours.

:'The guns of the steeled fleet :Recoil and then repeat :The hoarse salute.'

It also makes the first reference to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, specifically to the fictional character Captain Ahab.
*The second introduces the Quaker graveyard and Lowell's cousin.
*The third muses on the death of his cousin and on the dying thoughts and beliefs of the Quaker sailors buried there.
*The fourth continues the meditation on the sailors' bones and whale bones gathered there ('This is the end of the whaleroad and the whale...') and references the Pequod, which was Captain Ahab's ship.
*The fifth considers the violent death of the whale at the hands of the hunter ('And rips the sperm-whale's midriff into rags..')
*The sixth (separately-titled 'Our Lady of Walsingham') is mainly a meditation of the saint's shrine in Norfolk, with a passing reference to the main subject :'Sailor, you were glad:And whistled Sion by that stream.' :and concludes :'She knows what God knows,:Not Calvary's Cross nor crib at Bethlehem:Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham. '

*Finally in the seventh section the poet returns to his main subject and to the origin, and meaning, of life itself...:'You could cut the brackish winds with a knife:Here in Nantucket, and cast up the time:When the Lord God formed man from the sea's slime:And breathed into his face the breath of life,:And blue-lung'd combers lumbered to the kill.:The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.'

The final, oft-quoted, line appears to be open to a variety of interpretations.