The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket (Poem Summary)

Poem Summary

Title, Dedication, and Epigraph

Nantucket Island lies off the coast of Massachusetts. Once a whaling capital, there is now a whaling museum in the main city, Nantucket. Warren Winslow was Lowell’s maternal cousin who died along with his crew when his ship accidentally exploded in the Ambrose Channel of New York Harbor on January 3, 1944, during World War II. The epigraph comes from Genesis 1:26, in which God declares humanity superior to the rest of nature. This epigraph will be important, especially in respect to humanity’s treatment of nature and, more specifically the whale — the first-created animal and, in Islamic myth, the one holding the world on his back.

Lines 1-7

Madaket is on the east side of Nantucket. A drowned sailor — an analogue for Winslow — is seen hanging from the dragnet of the narrator’s naval vessel one stormy night.

Lines 8-12

The following lines come from the early pages of Thoreau’s Cape Cod, when Thoreau sees a wrecked ship on the beach. Cape Cod is just north of Nantucket. The drowned body is compared to a drowned ship, a shipwreck.

Lines 12-16

The corpse is weighted down and buried at sea, making the “Graveyard” of the title applicable to both the ocean and to an actual graveyard on Nantucket. An association is made between the drowned sailor and Ahab, the whaling captain of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851); they share identities as both attackers and victims. The ocean is a place where the dogfish “barks” its nose — “barks” referring both to the sound a dog makes and to the verb form of the word, meaning “to break.” “Ahab’s void and forehead” is ambiguous but might be a variation of heart and head. The “name / blocked in yellow chalk” possibly refers to the sailor’s name (found on his dog tags) written in block letters (capitals) upon an empty coffin to be later placed in a cenotaph in a graveyard on land. Thoreau, in Cape Cod, says he saw coffins on the beach upon which the names of the bodies were written with red chalk. Lowell might have substituted the more-common yellow chalk for his description.

Lines 17-19

The body that is pitched back into the sea from “whence it came” (a reference both to the place where the corpse was found and to the sea as the source of life) is a “portent,” or sign, to other dreadnoughts (a kind of battleship) of what happens to those with too much pride, to those with a “hell-bent deity” — namely, military sailors and whalers.

Lines 20-24

The narrator tells the sailors that they cannot protect their ship and themselves against the stormy Atlantic, deified as a “chaste” (punishing), “green” god — Poseidon or Neptune from Greek mythology — with fishlike “steel scales” and called “the earth-shaker” because of its ability to unleash powerful storms. Further, the sailors should not expect to be saved by the likes of Orpheus, who was considered the greatest Greek poet before Homer and who was given the lyre (Lowell’s “lute”) by Apollo. Orpheus hoped that with his lyric power he would be able to rescue his dead wife, Eurydice, from the underworld. The lute’s charm worked, allowing her to leave, under the condition that Orpheus would not turn to look at her as they escaped. When he did, she was swallowed up into the inferno.

Lines 24-26

Once the body is tossed overboard, the naval vessel shoots its guns. “Recoil” refers both to the backward kick of the guns and a standard reaction to seeing something horrible, such as death. The salute for the dead has been repeated so many times that its sound has become “hoarse.”

Lines 27-39

The birds in these lines are able to sympathize with the sailor’s death because they have experienced the peril of stormy seas. The narrator then asks the sailor if, in the land of the dead, he can hear the Pequod, Ahab’s destroyed whaling ship, breaking apart on the shores of Siasconset on Nantucket and off Madacket where fishermen fish with artificial squid bait for blue-fish.

Lines 39-44

In this stanza, the birds, Ahab’s ship, and the wind itself are all described as having wings. All of nature, as well as the bones of the Quakers, keen and moan for both Winslow’s death and the whale’s.

Lines 45-49

As at the end of the first stanza, death is final. There is no redemption either for Winslow or the tortured (“harrowed”) ocean. Poseidon, as a blue beard (Bluebeard was a fictional personage who killed his numerous wives), is unsympathetic to the sailors. The description of Spain as “Nantucket’s westward haven” is mysterious, since Spain is east of Nantucket.

Lines 49-57

In the twentieth century, warships carry out violence on what whalers long ago violated: nature. No lesson has been learned, and so time is contrite, “blue,” sad. Time also “blues” these dead lessons — killed or forgot by people — because time must continually bury them in the blue ocean.

Lines 57-62

Lowell uses metonymy when he states that time was young, since it was the sailors or humanity that was young and naive when they believed in sea monster gods — often whales — that Lowell goes on to equate with IS, or God, since God told Moses he was called “I AM THAT I AM” or simply “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). God, by the way, goes unnamed, because names contain or sum up, but God cannot be. The “whited monster” is a reference to Isaiah 23:27, where a “whited sepulchre” is mentioned, meaning a grave site that looks beautiful on the outside but contains bones and “uncleaness on the inside.” Moby Dick was considered, likewise, a beautiful monster.

Lines 62-68

It is likely that the secret cost to the death of the mariners was their salvation, since Lowell has already intimated that the sailors would not be reborn, especially since — even as they were drown-ing — they could not understand that what they were doing was an affront to God and nature. Lowell imagines that even when the sailors’ ship was destroyed and they were drowning in the “sperm-whale’s slick” (slick referring to a substance called ambergris that originates in the whale’s intestines and is secreted into the water), they rationalized that God must have been “on their side” or else they would have died long ago. Lines 65 to 68 are slightly altered from Psalm 124.

Lines 69-72

“This” refers to the Nantucket graveyard (death). “Whaleroad” is a variation of railroad, to make resonant that whales spew like trains, and in the case of Moby Dick, “spewed Nantucket bones” just as train engines once spewed smoke and whales spew water from their blowhole. “The end” is the literal end of the whaling expedition, the virtual end of whaling, the death of Moby Dick, and the death of the Pequod’s whalers.

Lines 73-78

Those who chased whales were fools, paying for it with their lives. They were “drowning men clutching at straws,” a cliché meaning that they were desperate for money and adventure while living and desperate for life while drowning. “Clamavimus” is Latin for “We have cried.” Compare this to Psalm 130:1 — “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.”

Lines 78-84

The seagulls seem the most sympathetic of all of the entities in this poem. Where before birds sympathized with Winslow, now they mourn for the hurt sea, imagined as being sucked dry by the land at low tide.

Lines 85-88

Again, this is the end of the whaling journey. “We are poured out like water” comes from Psalm 22:14, meaning to be exhausted with reference to sweating. The question beginning “Who will dance” will likely be answered “No one,” since no one is able to bring back the dead “mast-lashed master.” Odysseus was tied to the mast to resist the Sirens’ call in The Odyssey, and Ahab was hoisted up the mast to look for Moby Dick in chapter 130 of Moby Dick. “Mast-lashed” indicates that these captains were victims of fatal desire.

Lines 89-93

“Corruption” refers to the whale body corrupted by whalers’ harpoons. Wood’s Hole is the closest point to Martha’s Vineyard on the mainland of Massachusetts. Here Lowell asks the crucial question of whether the military man of World War II is similar to the whaler of yesteryear.

Lines 94-102

Jehoshaphat was said by Lowell to refer to “the valley of judgment. The world, according to some prophets and scientists, will end in fire.” By way of comparison, see Joel 3:12 — “Let the heathen be wakened and come unto the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.” The other lines depict the slaughter of the whale, with it twisting and turning in agony from having its “sanctuary” (body) violated by harpoons. The whale, however, is not wholly depicted as a victim, since, in its violent death throes, it can become a weapon, a “swingle” — the freely swinging part of a flail. The implication appears to be that if whales destroy ships, as Moby Dick sunk the Pequod, it is because they are treated savagely.

Lines 102-105

These lines describe the ship destroyed. The singing stars come from Job 38:7, where God describes them singing at the time of the creation of the world. Why they are singing in Lowell’s poem is puzzling, which just might be the point: humans, like Job, are too insignificant to understand the workings of the universe, such as why stars would sing as a ship sinks. The red flag comes from the last chapter of Moby Dick, where the Indian sailor, Tashtego — in a final human act of arrogance and foolishness — tries to nail a red flag to the mast even as the ship quickly sinks.

Lines 105-106

The statement “Hide, / Our steel, Jonas Messias, in Thy side” is a plea for redemption from a syncretic god. Jesus was pierced in his side by centurions and crucified, then resurrected after three days; Jonah was vomited up from the belly of the whale after three days; and the whale was harpooned. The plea to hide the spear or harpoon is a plea for salvation from the very being who is crucified or killed. It appears that the plea will go unanswered without a confession of sin, something these sailors do not do. In Catholicism, one does not, without right action, get saved without confessing. These sailors are Quakers (characterized by their use of “Thy”), not Catholics.

Lines 106-112

Walsingham is a famous shrine in Norfolk, England. For much of this stanza, Lowell relied upon E. I. Watkins’s Catholic Art and Culture, where the author describes the lane leading to Mary as well as Mary’s display and expression. There, Catholics walk barefoot along a lane to Mary in order to be healed. But Lowell is unhappy with this ritual as the penitents walk unthinkingly, like cows. The “munching English lane” is an instance of metaphor combined with metonymy: the penitents are seen as cows, who munch as they walk down the lane. Therefore, the lane is called “munching.”

Lines 113-116

Lowell’s critique continues as the lane is described as lined with the druid tree (oak). Druids were pagans, and Lowell, by not capitalizing the word, shows his disapproval. The stream refers to the peaceful waters of Shiloah or Siloam in John 9:7 and Isaiah 8:6, also referenced in the opening lines of Paradise Lost. These peaceful whirlpools are in marked contrast to the turbulent ocean of previous stanzas, and in John they are also healing, as a blind man cures his blindness by splashing the waters of Siloam on his eyes. The Sailor in this poem once came to Walsingham and sung Sion, a reference to Isaiah 51:11, where Jews return to Zion, a hill in Jerusalem, singing. The Sailor (standing for a kind of everyman) was glad here.

Lines 116-120

Mary is expressionless, even if somewhat sorrowful with her heavy eyelids. And the mention that she does not fit under the canopy indicates she belongs more to heaven than earth.

Lines 120-126

Mary’s expressionless face is without comeliness or charm (“Non est species, neque decor”) because she knows what God knows. She is not just the Mary of Jesus’s birth (crib) and death (Cross), but has assumed Heaven. When people learn to do without gladness and cease seeking selfish ends such as being healed, then, with deep meditation, the world will come to Mary and understand. A type of right Catholicism might then be achieved and God’s creatures saved from humanity’s war against itself and nature.

Lines 127-132

The scene shits from a place of sanctuary to a cemetery. This is a graveyard scene out of a horror film: an “empty” wind blowing creaky oak trees against the gravestones of empty graves (cenotaphs). In the ocean, a “gaff” (both a weapon to land fish and a stout pole from a ship) is tossed into a shoal bell (a bell to warn ships of shallow water). This is not a chime marking living time (“untimely”), but a death knell in the “greased” wash, an ocean covered with a slick of ambergris.

Lines 132-135

The death knell is apropos because the sea is filled with dead sailors either compared to, or accompanied by, the fallen angels mentioned in Book I of Milton’s Paradise Lost, especially the Philistine sea-god, Dagon: “Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man / And downward fish” (lines 462-3). These sea devils are unmarried and corroding and “spare of flash” (some versions print “spare of flesh”) because they have lost the lustre and glory they possessed in heaven before their fall. Milton’s reference for Dagon is I Samuel, 5, where Dagon is shown as a false god.

Lines 136-142

The Atlantic is called a “mart,” short for market because the ships shop the waves for sea life. In the phrase, “wing’d clippers,” sails are likened to wings of clippers, or swift sailboats. But the Atlantic also cuts; it is a butcher shop, gutting ships in its “bell-trap.” After describing what the sea does, Lowell proceeds to suggest what it could do if it revenged itself upon humanity: the sea could rise up, cut the wind, and toss humanity off the ocean; the ocean gives life, but it could also take it away.

Line 143

This line references Genesis 9:8-17, where God makes a covenant with humankind and all of nonhuman nature — for which the rainbow is a sign — never to flood the earth again or almost destroy the whole of life. The rainbow was, by some ancients, conceived as a weapon from which lightning bolts were shot. God’s display of his bow is to be read as a sign of former hostility now abated. When Lowell writes, “The Lord survives the rainbow of His will,” he likely means at least two things. First, that the Lord, despite man’s wickedness, will keep his promise and not send down another flood. Thus God remains a trusted protector. Second, and closely related in meaning, the line indicates that despite humankind’s attacks on nature, nature will endure and even be sympathetic to human death. In summation then, whether humanity perpetrates war on itself or on nature, ultimately both will survive, even if humanity does not learn the proper attitude as shown by Mary in section VI.

Media Adaptations

• Robert Lowell: A Mania for Phrases can be found in the PBS Voices and Visions series, New York: Center for Visual History Productions