The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket Literary Elements

Lowell himself appears to be the speaker.

Some lines are in iambic pentameter, though the meter is not consistent.

Similes

"We are poured out like water."
The "we" here makes this a broad statement, comparing humanity to water to suggest the instability of human life.

"And then walked barefoot the remaining mile;
And the small trees, a stream and hedgerows file
Slowly along the munching English lane,
Like cows to the old shrine..."
By likening the pilgrims to cows, the speaker makes them appear servile.

Metaphors

"And breathed into his face the breath of life,
And blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill."
Here the combers, or waves, seem to be a metaphor for mankind.

"The winds’ wings beat upon the stones,
Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush
At the sea’s throat and wring it in the slush..."
Birds themselves appear as inactive observers in this poem, but the wind steals their traits, yielding no results.

alliteration:

"Sailors, who pitch this portent at the sea/Where dreadnaughts shall confess/Its hell-bent deity,/When you are powerless/To sand-bag this Atlantic bulwark, faced/By the earth-shaker, green, unwearied, chaste/In his steel scales:"
"Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids/Seaward. The winds’ wings beat upon the stones,/Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush/At the sea’s throat and wring it in the slush"
"Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones/Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast/Bobbing by Ahab’s whaleboats in the East."
"Shiloah’s whirlpools gurgle and make glad/The castle of God."
"Gobbets of blubber spill to wind and weather,"

assonance:
"Bobs on the untimely stroke/Of the greased wash exploding on a shoal-bell"
"And blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill."
"Atlantic, where your bell-trap guts its spoil/You could cut the brackish winds with a knife"

Poetry

A Quaker graveyard, the ocean, a sacred site in England

Mourning, brooding

Unclear: the whale, the sailors, and God swap in and out of these roles

The major conflict is the whale against the sailors, which perhaps stands for man fighting man, as this poem speaks on both Lowell's loss of his cousin to World War II at large.

The climax of the poem seems to come in the single-stanza Section V, where the sailors hack at the whale. The speaker suddenly addresses Jonas Messias, a character whose very name invokes salvation, but that sense of salvation goes unresolved.

"And thunder shakes the white surf and dismembers
The red flag hammered in the mast-head."
This moment seems to foreshadow some sort of failure, perhaps of identity, perhaps of man's attempts to defy his violent nature.

This poem is heavy with allusions. First of all, it alludes to Moby-Dick, mentioning the whale and the captain of the ship. There are also many allusions to the Bible, from the epigraph to the mention of Jehoshaphat to the character of Jonas Messias. This poem also refers to The Odyssey by mentioning Odysseus, its protagonist, who was lashed to the mast of his ship to save himself from the sirens.

The birds in this poem are the animals most often given human traits. In Section IV, they "wail for water." In Section II, they "tremble" at the speaker's cousin's death. Perhaps Lowell gives them human traits because he feels he relates to them; they are observers, with little power.
He also personifies the sea and the stars; by doing so he grants them power and grandeur.

The poem uses a lot of "s" and "g" sounds, mimicking the gurgling and hissing of the sea.