The Quaker Graveyard In Nantucket Poem Rhyme Scheme

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i Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air	A
and the beasts and the whole earth and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth i	B
	-
I	B
A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket	C
The sea was still breaking violently and night	C
Had steamed into our north Atlantic Fleet	C
when the drowned sailor clutched the drag net Light	C
Flashed from his matted head and marble feet	C
He grappled at the net	C
With the coiled hurdling muscles of his thighs	D
The corpse was bloodless a botch of red and whites	E
It's open starring eyes	D
Were lusterless dead lights	E
Or cabin windows on a stranded hulk	F
Heavy with sand we weight the body close	G
Its eyes and heave it seaward whence it came	H
Where the heel headed dogfish barks at its nose	I
On Ahab's void and forehead and the name	H
Is blocked in yellow chalk	J
Sailors who pitch this at the portent at the sea	K
Where dreadnoughts shall confess	L
It's hell bent deity	K
When you are powerless	M
To sand bag this Atlantic bulwark faced	C
By the earth shaker green unwearied chaste	C
In his steel scales ask for no Orphean lute	C
To pluck life back The guns of the steeled fleet	C
Recoiled and then repeat	C
The hoarse salute	C
	-
II	B
Whenever winds are moving and their breath	N
Heaved at the roped in bulwarks of this pier	O
Then terns and sea gulls tremble at your death	N
In these waters Sailor can you hear	P
The Pequod's sea wings beating landward fall	Q
Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall	Q
	-
Off 'Sconset where the yawing S boats splash	R
The bellbuoy with ballooning spinnakers	M
As the entangled screeching mainsheet clears	M
The blocks off Madaket where lubbers lash	R
The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids	M
For blue fish Sea gulls blink their heavy lids	M
Seaward The winds' wings beat upon the stones	M
Cousin and scream for you and the claws rush	S
At the sea's throat and wring it in the slush	S
Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones	M
Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast	C
Bobbing by Ahab's whaleboats in the East	C
	-
III	B
All you recovered from Poseidon died	C
With you my cousin and the harrowed brine	T
Is fruitless on the blue beard of the god	C
Stretching beyond us to the castles in Spain	U
Nantucket's westward haven To Cape Cod	C
Guns cradled on the tide	C
Blast the eelgrass about a waterclock	J
Of bilge and backwash roil the salt and the sand	C
Lashing earth's scaffold rock	J
Our warships in the hand	C
Of the great God where time's contrition blues	M
Whatever it was these Quaker sailor's lost	C
In the mad scramble of their lives They died	C
When time was open eyed	C
Wooden and childish only bones abide	C
There in the nowhere where their boats were tossed	C
Sky high where mariners had fabled news	M
Of IS the whited monster what it cost	C
Them is their secret In the sperm whale's slick	J
I see the Quakers drown and hear their cry	B
If God himself had not been by our side	C
If God himself had not been on our side	C
When the Atlantic rose against us why	B
Then it had swallowed us up quick	J
	-
IV	-
This is the end of the whaleroad and the whale	V
Who spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell	W
And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools	M
To send the Pequod packing off to hell	W
This is the end of them three quarters fools	M
Snatching at straws to sail	V
Seaward and seaward on the turntail whale	V
Spouting out blood and water as it rolls	M
	-
Sick as a dog to these Atlantic shoals	M
Clamavimus O depths Let the sea gulls wail	V
	-
For water for the deep where the high tide	C
Mutters to its hurt self mutters and ebbs	M
Waves wallow in their wash go out and out	C
Leave only the death rattle of the crabs	M
The beach increasing its enormous snout	C
Sucking the ocean's side	C
This is the end of running on the waves	M
We are poured out like water who will dance	M
The mast lashed master of Leviathans	M
Up from this field of Quakers in their unstoned graves	M
	-
V	-
When the whales viscera go and the roll	X
Of its corruption overruns this world	C
Beyond tree swept Nantucket and Wood's Hole	X
whistle and fall and sink into the fat	C
In the great ash pit of Jehoshapat	C
The bones cry for the blood of the white whale	V
The fat flukes arch and whack about its ears	M
The death lance churns into the sanctuary tears	M
The gun blue swingle heaving like a flail	V
And hacks the coiling life out it works and drags	M
And rips the sperm whale's midriff into rags	M
Gobbets of blubber spill to wind and weather	Y
Sailor and gulls go round the stoven timbers	M
Where the morning stars sing out together	Y
And thunder shakes the white surf and dismembers	M
The red flag hammered in the mast head Hide	C
Our steel Jonas Messias in Thy side	C
	-
VI	-
Our Lady of Walsingham	H
There once the penitents took off their shoes	M
and then walked barefoot the remaining mile	Z
And the small trees a stream and hedgerows file	Z
Slowly along the munching English lane	U
	-
Like cows to the old shrine until you lose	M
Track of your dragging pain	U
The stream flows down under the druid tree	-
Shiloah's whirlpools gurgle and make you glad	C
And whistled Sion by that stream But see	-
	-
Our Lady too small for her canopy	-
Sits near the altar There's no comeliness	-
At all or charm in that expressionless	-
Face with its heavy eyelids As before	A2
This face for centuries a memory	-
Non est species neque d cor	A2
Expressionless expresses God it goes	-
Past castled Sion She knows what God knows	-
Not Calvary's Cross nor crib at Bethlehem	H
Now and the world shall come to Walsingham	H
	-
VII	-
The empty winds are creaking and the oak	J
Splatters and splatters on the cenotaph	-
The boughs are trembling and a gaff	-
Bobs on the untimely stroke	J
Of the greased wash exploding on a shoal bell	W
In the old mouth of the Atlantic It's well	W
Atlantic you are fouled with the blue sailors	-
Sea monsters upward angel downward fish	B2
Unmarried and corroding spare of flesh	C2
Mart once of supercilious winged clippers	-
Atlantic where your bell trap guts its spoil	D2
You could cut the brackish winds with a knife	-
Here in Nantucket and cast up the time	H
When the Lord God formed man from the sea's slime	H
And breathed into his face the breath of life	-
And the blue lung'd combers lumbered to the kill	E2
The Lord survives the rainbow of His will	E2

Robert Lowell

The Quaker Graveyard In Nantucket Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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