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.
Here the speaker mentions Ahab, the captain of the Pequod who dies at the end of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Here, the bones of the Quaker whalers feel sympathy for the dying whale, which seems self-contradictory. After death, it seems, the Quakers are searching for redemption for their violent hunt, or at least they feel sympathy for the creatures they have hunted. Lowell indicates that this feeling has come too late.
All you recovered from Poseidon died With you, my cousin, and the harrowed brine Is fruitless on the blue beard of the god, Stretching beyond us to the castles in Spain, Nantucket’s westward haven. To Cape Cod Guns, cradled on the tide, Blast the eelgrass about a waterclock Of bilge and backwash, roil the salt and sand Lashing earth’s scaffold, rock Our warships in the hand Of the great God, where time’s contrition blues Whatever it was these Quaker sailors lost In the mad scramble of their lives.
Here the Speaker hints at a mysterious transaction between man and the sea. However, the struggle is unequally weighted. Lowell's cousin loses, and the Quaker sailors lost something as well. Perhaps the loss is the sense of power over the natural world that traditional beliefs like religion—as evidenced in the opening epigraph from Genesis—endow man with.
This is the end of running on the waves;
We are poured out like water.
The section of the poem that this quote appears in, Section IV, is about endings. First, the whale ends by dying, and thus the chase after the whale is over. But these lines broaden the point; by using the first person plural, Lowell seems to speak to a greater audience. The phrase "running on the waves" could refer to the advancement of technology that allows man to safely navigate the sea, but also the technology that enabled a deadlier war than ever seen before. Human hubris appears to be the enemy, for it leads men to their deaths. The sailors in this poem think they can master the ocean, and they are wrong. Running on water also calls to mind Jesus's ability to walk on water. This moment signifies the end of that miracle; however, with Jesus's death comes salvation. It is also important to note that Peter walked on water in the Gospel of Matthew, but his fear caused him to sink. This adds a layer of doubt to the line.
"We are poured out like water" seems to reference the ease with which human lives can be lost to war, to the ocean, and to the inscrutable will of God.
