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LOWELL’S POEM “FOR THE UNION DEAD”: THE CHRONICLE OF THE PUBLIC

AND THE PRIVATE

Mohammad Tajuddin Assistant Professor,Department of English Language and Literature

International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh

Email: smtajuiiuc@gmail.com

Abstract

The paper explores the relationship between the public events and the poet’s private issues as

presented by Lowell in his poem, “For the Union Dead”. Robert Lowell is the most prolific writer

of 20th century America. His poem “For the Union Dead” perhaps, is one of the best poems in the

20th

century English literature. The supreme poem of Lowell’s career, it is a brilliant fusion of the

public and the private themes. Written in free verse, the poem, through different shifting and vivid

images of the past and the present, through telegraphic language or rather compressed sentences,

contrasts Lowell’s own debased time with the lively and glorious picture of the ideal past of

America. In contrast to the debased and devalued picture of the 20th

century America of which

Lowell was a part or witness, Lowell presents the picture of an ideal past, upon reflecting mainly

on a Civil War Memorial dedicated to a civil war Martyr, Colonel Gould Shaw with his

“Niggers” soldiers, who sacrificed their lives during the Civil war (1861-65) for great and noble

causes or dreams such as equality, economic and racial freedom and unity of the United States of

America. But during Lowell’s time people grew selfish due to growing materialism in the 20th

century America. Due to the lack of values and ideals, society and the civilization, as Lowell

deemed, turned into a sick and decayed entity which was doomed to annihilation. So while

presenting a debased picture of history and contemporary America, Lowell also expressed his

troubled historical vision and deep private sorrows of mind in the poem, with a sense of loss and

nostalgia. The unruly historical forces -- that changed his own town Boston in particular and

overall America—created a negative attitude in Lowell’s mind towards history. He was dismayed

and shocked at the materialistic change which he thought of as the ominous phenomenon, and not

as a sign of development. This paper aims at exploring the issue of the poet’s private mind and its

drama with the public affairs in order to understand how Lowell saw his debased time through his

historical awareness, along with his own private vision, and produced, at the same time, a note of

criticism of the unruly change of history and public events that, according to Lowell, resulted in

nothing but unethical materialism and commercialism.

Keywords: For the Union Dead, Gould Shaw, Civil war history, change, Public and private mind,

sense of loss, nostalgia, materialism and commercialism

INTRODUCTION

Robert Lowell, the most prolific writer of the 20th

century America, while addressing the 20th

century-

people of his own town Boston in particular and the

whole American in general in his poem, ―For the

Union Dead‖, combines the dramatic feelings of his

private mind and the actual happenings of history of

the present and past in such a way that the poem

becomes an extraordinary example of Lowell‘s

artistic craftsmanship and perfection in poetry. To

narrate and present the debased picture of a decayed

and devalued culture of his time and the effects of

such culture on his mind and society, Lowell picks up

a statue or memorial relief of 19th

century American

civil war hero, Colonel Gould Shaw with his

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―niggers,‖ placed opposite to the State House of

Boston. Based on the death and sacrifice of Colonel

Gould Shaw and his black soldiers, who fought in the

American civil war (1861-65) in the 19th

century,

Lowell contrasts the glorious past of sacrifice and

ideal with the debased present of selfishness and

commercialism of the 20th

century of which Lowell

was a part. Observing the civil war relief of Colonel

Gould Shaw, with a troubled vision of mind and

sense of loss and nostalgia, Lowell ruminates over

the ever changing culture and demographic and

geographic change of his own town Boston against

the former canvas of the poet‘s mind that he had

created during his childhood forty or fifty years back.

Lowell presents a lot of references to contemporary

socio-political events of American history related

with civil war and many other things. Lowell,

moreover, goes back to the American history of last

three centuries in order to delineate the decayed

culture of his time or to contrast the past with the

debased, norm less or devalued present due to the

growth of materialism and commercialism. Lowell‘s

musing, triggered up by his observation of the civil

war memorial relief dedicated to Colonel Shaw and

his black soldiers; goes back and forth over the

shadow lines of long American socio-political history

specially the civil war (1861-65) in relation to his

understanding of his own 20th

century America.

When he ruminates the poem reveals his own private

mind and its reaction to the historical changes. What

makes the poem ―supreme‖ (Perkins, 2006, p.414) in

Lowell‘s career is, perhaps, Lowell‘s capacity of

mingling too many issues of history at a time in such

a small poem. As a result of the self-revealing

musing and reflections of the poet over the decayed

present and the ideal past the poem becomes the

chronicle of the poet‘s private mind and the public

events.

OBJECTIVE AND METHODOLOGY

The aim of this paper is to argue the issue of the

poet‘s private relationship with the public events

and to explore it with one of the ‗supreme‘ poems of

the poet‘s career. Though Robert Lowell has written

many poems on public and private themes earlier like

this one, the poem ―For the Union Dead‖, which is

regarded as the supreme of Lowell‘s career, has never

been explored as this paper explores the issue in

details. In a greater scale the poem ―For the union

Dead‖, I like to think, presents a picture of universal

conflict between one‘s individual ideal self and the

devalued forces of society in any particular historical,

socio-cultural and political milieu.

The poem has been studied thoroughly with some

other similar poems of Lowell and the various things

have been analyzed to find out the nature of the

relationship between the poets‘ private and the public

events. To understand the relationship between the

poet‘s personal and the public issues in the poem, the

text of the poem has been analyzed elaborately, along

with socio-political and historical situation and

events in details related with the poem.

Before writing the paper an extensive study was

made on the life of the poet and his books with a

view to understanding the relationship of the poet‘s

private and the public events in a broader scale so as

to make the endeavor taken in this paper easy and

comfortable with respect to understanding the

relationship between the poet‘s private issues and the

public matters in the poem, ―For the Union Dead‖.

Based on the analysis of socio-political and historical

issues related with the poem the paper also has

analyzed the text of the poem with a critical mind in

the context of the related history as well as the life of

the poet.

DISCUSSION

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) was born in a Bostonian

Brahmin family. Proud of being one of the members

of an old New England family and having

relationship with cultural heritage of Boston, and

being relative to one of the renowned poets of his

time, Amy Lowell, Lowell enjoyed some advantages,

and he had relationship with many contemporary

literary figures such as Randal Jarrell and Elizabeth

Bishop and others. Though he was born in an old

protestant family, he converted himself into

Catholicism, and by this he presented not only the

sense of his rebellion against his family‘s religious

tradition but also revealed his own deep spiritual

crises. A bipolar suffering from manic depressive

illness Lowell, who grew later disenchanted with

religion and God, became one of the ―conscientious

objectors‖ and developed a kind of moral authority

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and vision based on both of his personal troubled

psyche and the actual happenings outside in society

of America in particular and the world as a whole. He

wrote a variety of poems with a variety of themes.

His literary career was characterized by ―revision‖

and ―changes‖ like his own life (Baym, 1989,

p.2483).

The year (1943) when the United States of America

entered the Second World War, Lowell composed

and published his first book of poems, Land of

Unlikeness. But he got the recognitions as a poet for

ever with his publication of Lord Weary’s Castle in

1946. His reputation was more increased by his

―groundbreaking‖ book Life Studies (1959), in which

he produced not only ―a new more accessible style‖

(Perkins,2006,p. 406) but also produced a way for a

new type of poetry called Confessional Poetry.

Sylvia Plath and many other poets were influenced

by Lowell‘s style of confessional poetry. Though a

―political-historical theme‖ (Perkins,2006, p.413)

runs through Life Studies, most of the poems of Life

Studies are yet autobiographical, characterized by

sexual obsession, impotency, and restlessness, fear of

madness, grotesque psychic realities and suicidal

impulses. What is interesting is that Lowell presents

in Life Studies his personal psychic landscape and his

relationship with his wives and children, along with

different sociological and historical themes.

He maintained his reputation by the publications of

two more brilliant books in the 1960s, For the Union

Dead (1964) and Near the Ocean (1967).Though the

private lyrics in For the Union Dead (1964) do not

have generally the same circumstantial detail and the

narration of Life Studies, For the Union Dead was yet

the book which contained all original verses of

Lowell after Life Studies. For the Union Dead (1964)

includes a number of poems including the title poem

―For the Union Dead‖ which fuses private and public

themes (Baym, 1989, p.2484). Lowell also wrote on a

number of historical figures in poems like ―Caligula‖

―Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts‖ and

―Lady Raleigh‘s Lament‖. In the title poem ―For the

Union Dead‖ and ―Fall 1961‖ Lowell combined

private and public concerns.(American Poetry

Foundation, 2014). Based on his private and public

concerns and experiences Lowell creates his own

historical awareness and he makes an assessment of

his own time accordingly. Sometimes, Lowell

directly depends on contemporary or past historical

references or facts to judge the present and the future

of his own American culture and humanity as a

whole. Thus History becomes Lowell‘s concern.

American past ‗history‘ and contemporary socio-

political events offered him plot in the poem, ―For

the Union Dead‖ to judge his contemporary society-

though the burden of his own family history was

substantial for him to write poetry as he did not only

in Life Studies but also in other autobiographical

books such as History, The Dolphin (1973), etc.

Perhaps, because of a very chaotic political situations

and disturbing scenes of killing and murder of the

innocent civilians especially in Germany, in the

context of Second World War, Lowell developed a

very negative attitude to history. According to Lowell

‗History‘ focused on mania, violence, egoism, lust,

conquest, cruelty, servility, greed, corruption and

suffering from the ancient world to the present day.

Throughout history, Lowell wants to say, no progress

or advance had taken place and he hopes nothing for

the future (Perkins: 2006, p. 409-10). The frustrating

picture of Lowell‘s view of history reminds us of

W.B. Yeats‘ disturbing vision of change in ―The

Second Coming‖ and the nemesis of human history

and so called idea of ‗progress‘ of human civilization,

just as Lowell presents the same in ―For the Union

Dead‖. Yeats sensed the rise of fanaticism and

brutality in the context of Irish struggle of

Independence, the Easter Rising and the Civil War.

So Yeats says, ―mere anarchy is loosed upon the

world‖ and the best (people) of the society lacks

conviction to face the anarchy, while the majority of

people-- the young or old—are restless driven by the

new trend of history. Similarly, Lowell sensed human

corruption, ugly materialism and greed behind the

external material changes under the covering of

progress or development in contemporary America.

Lowell seems to be a little compromising with his

former view of history that history is nothing but the

human corruption and greed etc. here in the poem

―For the Union Dead‖, while at least he contrasts the

debased present with the glorious ideal past of

sacrifice represented by Colonel Gould Shaw and his

black soldiers in the civil war.

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Lowell composed ―For the Union Dead‖ in 1960. It

was also the height of American Civil Rights

movement by the black Afro-American who had

historical connection with those slaves who had

fought for their freedom in the Civil War in the 19th

century, and thereby they were declared free or

released from slavery based on the historic

―Emancipation Proclamation‖ of Abraham Lincoln

on January 1, in 1883.After the American Revolution

(from 1776 to 1783) the civil war was one of the

most important historical events in the American

―historical consciousness‖(Mcpherson,n.d.).Though

the Declaration of Independence (1776) of American

founding fathers constitutionally declared America as

a free and independent nation with equal rights for

all, the civil war finally tested the ideas of ―natural

rights‖ that is, constitutional ideas of freedom and

values. It was the civil war which decided what was

going to be the nature of the union or the future of the

USA--whether it would be one nation based on ideas

of ―natural rights‖ as propounded by the American

founding fathers without slavery and human bondage

or would be a divided nation having a separate

sovereign government for every individual state.

Finally, however, with the victory of the North over

the South slavery was abolished and was established

one United States of America. And the very title of

the poem indicates its historical connection with

those union soldiers, who fought and sacrificed in the

19th

century American civil War (1861-65), between

the North and the South states of the USA for the

unity of the union. The civil war broke out because of

the North‘s and South‘s disagreements on many

issues such as tariffs, state‘s rights etc. notable--

slavery. But according to the title of the poem, ―For

the Union Dead‖ the Union, (meaning the USA)

established by the deaths and sacrifices of the

numberless union soldiers including the black and the

white, is dead now, because the dreams of union

soldiers for the free union of ‗equal rights‖

(Mcpherson,n.d.) without racial segregation are dead

in the United States of America in the 20th

century.

The union---of equality, moral values and natural

rights---is dead now in the time of Lowell. So he

commemorates the civil war of the 19th

century to

remind the 20th

century people of its value, along

with his reflections on the values and ideas for which

Colonel Gould Shaw and black soldiers sacrificed

their lives.

America, after the Second World War, entered a new

phase of material progress with rapid

industrialization and urbanization from the previous

agricultural economy. After the economic recession

or the famous depression in 1930s in America and

throughout the Europe, the Second World War stirred

the American nations more than ever because of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing. Later, American

civil rights movements in 1960s and 70s with the

incident of American involvement in the Vietnam

War (1954-75) created waves of socio-political and

economic turmoil. Anti-war sentiment grew among

many Americans with the national pride and

humanitarian consciousness. Also, Lowell who was

the ―conscientious objector‖, the critic of American

foreign policy of war and American government, felt

an urge to address the people of his time. In the midst

of American material progress, there was still a fear

of nuclear annihilation; along with the violation of

the rights of black people. So Lowell, with reference

to people‘s familiar things, contrasts his own

twentieth century and the ninetieth century with a

special focus on the civil war, along with his personal

and historical concerns and vision in order to address

his time and his people. While contrasting the two

different centuries, along with poet‘s childhood

memories with present adulthood through different

contrasting and vivid images, Lowell, at the same

time, presents his private troubled psyche in relation

to all historical and public matters.

Lowell starts the poem ―For the Union Dead‖ with

reference to the historic marine Aquarium in South

Boston which was established in 1912, and later

when it was demolished in 1950s, Lowell grew an

adult man. The last stanza of the poem ends with

reference to the same Aquarium mentioned in the

first stanza, but the actual ‗aquarium‘ of Boston

outside of the poem and the aquarium in the poem

rather carries different connotation in the end. It is

because Lowell always creates a world of his own

based on his observations of actual things and actual

experiences of his Boston. And in between the first

stanza and the last stanza there are different time

shifts/lines with the rest of the poem related with

different historical events. A reader must follow the

track of these historical time shifts Lowell has

produced to understand how he connects his private

mind or awareness with all these time shifts at the

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same time, to relate the present. He has done this

through many flashbacks strategies:

My hand draws back. I often sigh still

for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom

of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,

I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,

yellow dinosaur steam shovels were grunting

as they cropped up tons of mush and grass

to gouge their underworld garage.

Lowell himself said, ―I have flashbacks to what I

remember, and notes on old history.‖(Poetry

Foundation, 2014).The old South Boston aquarium,

which was once visited by many tourists also the poet

himself during his childhood, is now a desolate

(image of Sahara desert) place without tourists or

visitors. The word ‗Sahara‘ also foreshadows the

atmosphere of the poem just as the lines in Macbeth:

―Fair is foul and foul is fair…‖ or in Dickens‘s A

Tale of Two Cities: ―This is the best of time this is the

worst of time…‖ reveal something ominous. Sahara

indicates ominous decay in the snow or barrenness

without life .After many years when the poet visits

the place; he sees now the ―broken windows‖ and the

―dry airy tanks‖ of the aquarium signifying the loss

of a vibrant culture with an evidence of decay. The

outward landscape with the images of broken

windows, together with the reference to cod fish and

loss of its ―scales‖, create a sense of loss in the

consciousness of the poet‘s mind. Once Cod fish was

the means of lively economic activities of the New

England by which many became rich. With a sense of

nostalgia the poet remembers his childhood when he

used to visit the place and ―crawled‖ his nose ―like

snail on the glass‖ of the aquarium, with the

―compliant fish‖ to drift bubbles. Like T. S. Eliot,

Lowell virtually presents a picture of waste land,

where the spirit of life is waning day by day in the

context of socio-economic and material changes or so

called ―progress‖, but behind the progress there is a

decline in people‘s values. Earlier, Lowell presents

the grimmer picture of Waste land without people‘s

noble purpose or values in his autobiographical or

confessional poem: ―Skunk Hour‖, a poem from Life

Studies:

The season is ill—,

We have lost our summer millionaire,

Who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean

Catalogue. His nine-Knot yawl was auctioned off

to lobstermen…‖

The millionaire became rich from the business of

L.L.Bean, a mail-order house, Maine, USA. Whether

the millionaire committed suicide like many other

millionaires during the fall of capitalism and

bankruptcy of the twentieth century USA (Baym,

2003) or just died of disease is not mentioned by

Lowell. But Lowell presents an image of

contamination over the landscape saying, ―A red fox

stain covers Blue Hill‖, as if the place were infected

and haunted by death and disease. The poem is set in

Castine, Maine, a New England state where Lowell

had a summer house. Lowell thus presents in ―Skunk

Hour‖ the death of a lively New England culture with

the growing urbanization and commercialism as he

does the same in ―For the Union Dead‖. A sign of

―sterility‖(Axelrod,1978) throughout the landscape is

very clear while reading the ―Skunk Hour‖ just as the

sign of desolation or sterility is heightened in ―For

the Union Dead‖ through the image of ― a Sahara of

snow‖ in the first stanza and, ―the aquarium is gone‖

in the last stanza. What is significant is that the poet

(or the ―persona‖ in the poem) is caught up by the

sterility and the sense of loss or desolation himself. In

―Skunk Hour‖ he writes: ‗I myself am hell‘. Once,

regarding his personal link with the poems Lowell

says, ―I am a poem‖ (Perkins, 2006). He also adds

that if poetry were ―I‖, it would be more convincing

to the readers.

Like his reflection on Nautilus Island of Maine and

its change in ―Skunk Hour‖, here in the poem, ―For

the Union Dead‖ Lowell definitely becomes critical

of the urbanization process of cotemporary Boston

with the growing number of new arrival of

immigrants who are changing the old bucolic and

idyllic scenario of South Boston into a very harsh

chaotic clamor of busy city life with construction

works by big steam shovels or bulldozers:

My hand draws back. I often sigh still

for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom

of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,

I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

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fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,

yellow dinosaur steam shovels were grunting

as they cropped up tons of mush and grass

to gouge their underworld garage.

When Lowell (often) sighs ―still for the dark

downward vegetating kingdom‖ (meaning lost green

dark bushy land with different creatures and plants)

of reptile and fish which he used to experience during

his childhood, he reveals not only the deep sorrow of

mind with nostalgia for the lost natural landscape due

to the growing urbanization, but also reveals a

romantic notion of the love of nature and natural

creatures. Lightly, the evocation of Lowell‘s

childhood memory in the poem is similar to the

evocation of memory by Dylan Thomas as in his

―Fern Hill‖ and we see similar evocation in the

poetry of Wordsworth. But unlike the British

romantic poets, Lowell is directly concerned with the

public matters like Walt Whitman. From the point of

view of a modern environmentalist or a naturalist

Lowell‘s stand against reckless urbanization is very

clear in his words: ―Last March, I pressed against the

new ―barbed‖ and ―galvanized fence‖ on the Boston

common‖. Creating a sense of mental discomfort in

mind by such words as ―pressed‖, ―barbed‖ and

―galvanized fence‖, Lowell declares the presence of

hard iron, a symbol of modernism and machinery,

around the Boston Common, the historic park which

was established in 17th

century and it was an open

place at that time for people and their horses or cows

to move freely. Now Lowell finds the same park in

the 20th

century fenced with iron-made ―barbed wire‖

to save it from growing number of city streets and

moving people. Lowell creates a deep sense of the

pastness of the past and its presence in the poem,

―For the Union Dead‖ in contrast to the present over

which he ruminates through the shades of ages.

Lowell ―organizes key images from the past into a

pattern which illuminates the present (Baym, 2003,

p.2484)‖. He does it here, with some vivid imagery

of natural creatures such as ―snail‖ ―reptile‖ and the

prehistoric animal ―dinosaur‖. These creatures, which

belonged to the ―dark vegetating kingdom‖, have

decreased or are no greater in number or not at all

because of people‘s greed for land and need of

human habitation. That‘s why the present is devoid of

dinosaur, reptile and snail but full of big bulldozers

clamoring behind the Boston Common to make (―to

gouge‖) underground garages for the growing

number of cars in the city. Picture of social decay and

corruption is intensified when we see that dinosaur is

replaced by steam shovel just as reptile and snail are

replaced by different machinery and cars, instead of

horses or cows that moved in Boston Common in the

17th

century.

Throughout the poem runs evidence of Lowell‘s

―personal history‖ (Poetry Foundation,2014).Asked

to participate in the Boston Arts Festival in 1960,

Lowell recited the poem in the gathering of about

four thousand people in the Boston common and he

was acclaimed by the audience for the recitation. The

poem was written in memory of the civil war hero,

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw whose sister, Josephine,

had married one of Lowell‘s ancestors Charles

Russell Lowell (who was also, like Gould Shaw

killed in battle). In this regard, it is an undeclared

family poem of Lowell. However, with the

publication of For the Union Dead and The Old

Glory in 1960s Lowell actually ―returned to a

consideration of individual‘s relation to history both

in its personal and public dimensions‖ (Poetry

Foundation, 2014). What Lowell suggests here in the

poem is people‘s negligence and indifference to

history, national heritage and the sacrifices of those

who died for a noble and great cause. Lowell thinks

that growing materialism and human greed cause this

indifference. When Lowell presents the picture of

construction works (―excavations‖) going on in

Boston beside or close to the statue of Shaw, he

makes some comments and expresses some

reflections on the situation. Here public events

become the occasion for personal reflections: Parking spaces luxuriate like civic

sand piles in the heart of Boston.

A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders

braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel

Shaw

and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry

on St. Gaudens‘ shaking Civil War relief,

propped by a plank splint against the garage‘s

earthquake.

Upon observing big ―parking spaces‖ full of cars in

the ―heart of Boston‖ Lowell mocks at the fragile

―civic‖ duty or behavior of the city dwellers with the

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suggestive words ―sand piles‖. ―The tingling

statehouse‖ on the other hand is shaking over the

excavations as the construction works are going on

for the modernization of the city and for an urban

renewal. Opposite to the historic statehouse built in

1713, is propped by a plank splint the statue of

―Colonel Shaw and his bell-checked negro infantry‖

produced by Irish- American sculptor St.Gauden

(1848-1907). The Gould Shaw memorial, which not

only commemorates the sacrifice of Shaw and his

Negro soldiers who laid down their lives in the civil

war but also presents a model of sacrifice for the

Bostonian, is now propped by a plank against the

―garage‘s earthquake‖. Lowell reflects over the

present condition of the statue and how people are

treating it. Once Keats pondered over some imprinted

images on a Grecian urn and wrote his poem, ―Ode

on a Grecian Urn‖. Keats presents the beauty of true

art and its permanence rather than what the ancient

Greek-- women, young boys and men in the picture

imprinted on the urn-- were doing. Here unlike Keats,

Lowell is thinking over the statue of Shaw and Negro

soldiers not to present the beauty of arts or its

permanence, but the picture of decay and loss during

his time due to growing urbanization and

modernization. Here in ―tingling state house‖

―tingling‖ suggests impermanence and ―earthquake‖

suggests a threat of destruction. So, the old heritage

of history and glorious past will be destroyed or

already under the threat of destruction. It is also an

ironic situation for Lowell that he was critical of the

Irish immigrants who were responsible for changing

the city Boston mostly, but the civil war relief over

which he is talking has been made by an Irish-

American sculptor, St. Gaudens. Also, Lowell‘s

vision of history--personal or public- is bleak and

grim. As a bipolar who had several mental

breakdowns and manic depressive illness and who

married thrice having disturbing family life, must

have had deep anxiety and despair. Perkins says,

Lowell‘s poems have the same ―multiple dimensions

just as T. S. Eliot‘s The Waste Land had expressed

the present and past life of a modern city and also

Eliot‘s own despair, conflating a historical,

sociological, and personal vision‖ (Perkins, 2006, p.

404). What is significant about Lowell‘s style here is

that Lowell focuses on the name of Colonel Shaw

and his memorial in the sixth stanza of the poem

when already he has finished almost five stanzas

from the beginning of the poem with other issues

related to his childhood memories and other

important Bostonian historical heritage such as cod

fish and reference to the historic Boston Common

etc. Lowell maintains such style in many other poems

such as ―The Memory of the West Street and Lepke‖,

―Skunk Hour‖ and ―The Quaker Graveyard at

Nantucket‖. Lowell keeps silent so long about the

main issue of his poem and suddenly outbursts or

breaks silence in the middle or almost at the last part

of the each of these poems. Thus every poem takes

multiple dimensions when Lowell makes comments

on different things before and after of the main point

or theme of his poem. Nonetheless, private and

public themes remain the dominant affairs.

Sometimes, some words and phrases create

ambiguity in the meaning. But such ambiguity

reveals an extraordinary strength of his perception at

the same time, so sometimes the ambiguity of his

style is regarded as the beauty of Lowell‘s poems.

Perkins likes to call Lowell‘s style as Hardship style

(2006).Also, influenced by the Metaphysical poets of

the 17th

century; Lowell‘s poems are witty, punning,

and paradoxical.

Lowell quotes a Latin epigraph, immediately after the

title of the poem, inscribed originally on the bronze-

made civil war relief dedicated to Colonel Shaw

slightly changing it like: Relinquunt Omnia Servare

Rem Publicam, which means ―They gave up

everything for the republic‖. Lowell just pluralizes

‗He’ into ‗They’ in the epigraph in order to uplift the

sacrifices of the Negro soldiers with that of Colonel

Shaw, the only white commander of the 154th

Massachusetts regiment comprised by ―niggars‖. In

the height of the Civil war black soldiers were

recruited as soldiers after a long time debate.

Whether or not they were fit for the battles, the black

slaves were finally recruited by the North in order to

crush the strengths of the South slave states. The

154th

Machasusetts regiment under the command of

Colonel Gould Shaw, a white man, was one of such

many regiments comprising of black slaves as

soldiers to fight against the South slave states. So

during the Civil Right Movement when Lowell

presented the issue of Shaw memorial with its image

of black soldiers, it carries a special significance or

implication in the contemporary socio-political

context, and presents Lowell‘s own political and

moral stand regarding the civil right movement.

71

Black-Afro Americans brought out procession

against discrimination and racial segregation under

the leadership of Martin Luther King, the then

American clergyman, and Malcolm X, another great

leader of the time. Both the leaders were the

staunchest critics of social and racial discrimination

and American materialism. Perhaps, Lowell extolled

the white commander Colonel Gould Shaw and the

bravery of the black soldiers at the same time, as if

Lowell were trying to say that the black also had the

contribution to forming the present USA or Union to

ensure equal freedom and economic justice for the

white and the black(Shepherd,2007). Thus Lowell

established the relationship between arts and politics.

However, many of Lowell‘s poetry have such

connection between arts and politics. In the statue

Colonel Shaw, the white commander, is seen riding

on a horse in the middle, a sword in hand, surrounded

by other black soldiers who are marching on foot

carrying muskets on their shoulder. They seem to be

resolute and determined for their cause. Lowell talks

about the consequence of the battle at Fort Wagner,

North Carolina, when the 154th

regiment under

Shaw‘s command fought with the Confederate

soldiers and sacrificed their lives, two months after

they had passed off Boston:

Two months after marching through Boston,

half the regiment was dead;

at the dedication,

William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes

breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone

in the city‘s throat.

Its Colonel is as lean

as a compass-needle.

―Half the regiment‖, meaning half of the black

soldiers, died at Fort Wagener Battle with its white

commander Gould Shaw in 1863 when they

confronted the Confederate soldiers during the civil

war. William James, American writer, psychologist

and the famous Bostonian, who in the dedication

ceremony to the Shaw Memorial or at the

opening/unveiling ceremony of the memorial held on

May, 31, 1897, spoke the crowd and said, ―He could

almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.‖ William

James was one of the witnesses to the movement of

the 154th

Machasusetts regiment through Boston

during the war, though he was not known to have

participated in the war. Lowell, quoting the portion of

William James‘ speech, highlights the ever fresh

memory of the black soldiers in American civil war

history, at the same time the artistic perfection of the

statue, which was one of the specimens of the

beginning of early American sculptures.

Thus, commenting upon some historical facts, Lowell

again comes back to his own analysis of the present,

of his own time revealing his private mind at the

same time. Lowell says, ‗Their monument sticks like

fishbone in the city‘s throat‘ as if the city people did

not want the monument anymore. The civil war

memorial or the ―monument‖ is as intolerable as

―fishbone‖ in the throat of the people of city. People

want to get rid of it; they want to throw it away.

People‘s dishonor and disrespect to old heritage and

sign of history is not a new thing. Thus Lowell

presents the picture of the debased present. Then

Lowell again focuses on the image of Colonel Gould

Shaw sitting on the horseback as ―lean as a compass-

needle‖. The thin body of the colonel compared to

compass needle perhaps indicates the strict life style

of the man. It is said that Shaw was a great

‗disciplinary‘ in his profession and during training he

would not hesitate to shoot any trainee if anyone

found guilty. A strong trainer and strong disciplinary

as he was he also had control over his health and

fitness of the body. Perhaps, Lowell also wants to

indicate that the colonel is firmly fixed at his target

like the foot of the compass. It is interesting that,

sometimes, some lines of the poetry of Robert Lowell

produce some ambiguous suggestions rather than any

direct meaning. Therefore, from such ambiguous

suggestions are produced different layers of meaning.

This feature of Lowell‘s poems is in abundance in

―For the Union Dead‖.

In addition to this, as Lowell moves back and forth

throughout the poem from the past to the present and

vice versa, it easily reminds us of Eliot‘s style in

―The Waste Land‖. Also, when Lowell quotes Latin

epigraph as collage at the beginning of the poem or

from William James‘s speech, these just prove the

modern and post modern turn in the poetry of Lowell.

Just as T.S. Eliot quotes an epigraph from Dante‘s

Inferno, at the beginning of the poem, ―The Love

Song of J. Alfred Prufrock‖ or many such allusions

72

as collage and in ―The Waste Land‖, Lowell does the

same not only in ―For the Union Dead‖ but also in

―Skunk Hour‖, ―Man and Wife‖, ―The Quaker

Graveyard in Nantucket‖ and ―The Memory of West

street and Lepke‖. Using fragmented lines, quotation,

collages and epigraph is the style of modern poetry as

extensively used by T.S. Eliot. Gilbert says, early in

his career Lowell embraced Eliot and Ezra Pound and

he died with the ―burden of the embrace‖ (Lecouras,

2000). Lowell actually was born with modernism not

after or before it. However, what makes Lowell

different from T.S. Eliot is that Lowell presents

clearly, as he has done in his autobiographical and

confessional poems, his own self, which comes very

close to the ―persona‖ in each of his poems. But

according to T.S. Eliot‘s Tradition and the Individual

Talent the poet‘s individuality exists separately from

the poetry. For T. S. Eliot poet and poetry are two

separate entities. Moreover, ―For the union Dead‖ has

both the autobiographical as well as confessional

qualities which contradict with the poetic theory of

T.S. Eliot propounded in the Tradition and the

Individual Talent.

Lowell continues celebrating Colonel Gould Shaw

based on his observations and personal reflections of

the statue, as he views it with personal feelings. The

following lines basically highlights the actual

personality and temperament of Colonel Shaw as he

really was, and also represent Shaw‘s ideal position

for which he sacrificed life with other ―niggars‖ with

smiling face and enjoys the ‗secret pleasure‘ with his

private mind which no one could understand except

for another ideal person. So, Lowell presents Shaw,

as if he were suffocating for privacy (for that ―secret

pleasure‖ caused by sacrifice of life for a noble

cause) and frowning at people‘s negligence on the

contrary:

He has an angry wren like vigilance,

a greyhound‘s gentle tautness;

he seems to wince at pleasure,

and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now.

He rejoices in man‘s lovely,

peculiar power to choose life and die—

when he leads his black soldiers to death,

he cannot bend his back.

Lowell‘s personal reflections on the statue, and also

his sayings ―he has an angry wren like vigilance‖ in

relation to Shaw‘s true nature of a real captain of the

regiment; and his saying ―He rejoices man‘s lovely,

peculiar power to choose life and die…‖ in relation to

the ideal position of Shaw‘s sacrifice of his life are

extraordinary. He died for the unity of the union from

real sense of patriotism. Shaw and his noble sacrifice

is not time bound, ―He is out of bounds now‖ though

people seems to be neglecting Shaw and his sacrifice.

Shaw leads his inexperienced black soldiers to death,

that is, he knew that he was going to fight a

matchless battle because the opponent confederate

soldiers were more experienced and stronger than his

own 154th

regiment comprised of less experienced

slave soldiers. But Lowell says, ―He cannot bend his

back‖ (retreat) from battle because he is going to

fight and die with his black soldiers not for any

selfish gain but for noble notion and dreams.

Lowell then contrasts people‘s attitude to the

rememebberanc or celebration of the ―sincere

rebellion‖ meaning the American Revolution, and the

Civil war with a reference to the ―Grand Army

Republic‖, an organization of Civil War veterans for

the well being of all members. ―Frayed flags‖

(distorted or ragged flags) are visible on (―quilt‖,

covers) the Graveyards of the Grand Army Republic

and less flags are visible on the sparse of village

churches spreading in the green fields. It indicates

that the memory of the civil war is not being

celebrated as it should be or the memory of the war is

distorted or ragged in the people‘s consciousness.

Also, it indicates that the American Revolution

(―sincere rebellion‖) was rather meaningful and

important than the South‘s attempt to fight for

slavery in the civil war (Shepherds, 2007):

On a thousand small town New England greens,

the old white churches hold their air

of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags

quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the

Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier

grow slimmer and younger each year—

wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets

and muse through their sideburns . . .

73

Thus the memory of really ―abstract‖ (because they

do not physically exist now) union soldiers who died

in the 19th

century civil war is fading day by day. The

statue is going to ―grow slimmer and younger each

year‖ because the memory of the ideal past is fading

each year, being forgotten. It seems to the poet that

the soldiers are dozing over muskets, though actually

the soldiers are not like dozing in the memorial, they

are rather seen marching on forward. So why does

Lowell say they are ―dozing‖? By this Lowell

perhaps wants to say people walking beside the

memorial seldom pay attention or indifferent to the

memorial neglected aside. The motionless silent

memorial statue, with its life-like images looking

forward with head high, creates a sense of pondering

of the statue. So it seems to the poet ―the soldiers are

musing through sideburns‖, as if they were looking

into eternity, being completely detached not only

from the clutches of ever-changing time but also

from selfish twenty- century people.

Then Lowell relates more historical and

contemporary facts upon which he reflects in relation

to the sacrifice of Colonel Shaw, who sacrificed his

life for a noble cause:

Shaw‘s father wanted no monument

except the ditch,

where his son‘s body was thrown

and lost with his ―niggers.‖

The ditch is nearer.

There are no statues for the last war here;

on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph

shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the ―Rock of Ages‖

that survived the blast. Space is nearer.

When I crouch to my television set,

the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like

balloons.

When Shaw was dead at Fort Wagner battle, he was

buried in the mass grave (―the ditch‖) with his black

soldiers (―niggers‖) with a sense of hatred by the

confederate soldiers though he (Shaw) could have got

an appropriate burial ritual as the high military

official; if Shaw‘s father would claim for it. But

Shaw‘s father did not want to take away his son‘s

dead body from the mass grave where the other black

soldiers (―niggers‖) were buried with him. Lowell

thinks that or he analyses this situation saying that

Shaw‘s father actually did not want the black and the

white segregation as Lowell is witnessing it in the

20th

century during his time. Lowell thinks that

Shaw‘s father did not want ―racial segregation‖ in

America, just as he did not want a separate grave for

his twenty- year‘s old white boy, Colonel Gould

Shaw. According to Lowell‘s perception Shaw‘s

father did not want the monument or the memorial in

honor of his son, but rather wanted those ideals of

equality and humanity to live in the society for which

his son sacrificed his life in the civil war. Thus

Lowell actually presents his position against any

racial segregation and discrimination in the USA

during the civil rights movement. What is the value

of the statue or memorial if the ideals on which the

memorial is built are not followed by people? Then

Lowell, who was a wholehearted anti war

personality, contrasts the American civil war (1861-

65) of the 19th

century with the Second World War

(1939-45) of his time and says that ―there are no

statues for the last war here‖, indicating the moral

and ideal lacking of the Second World War as

compared with the American civil war. For Lowell

the civil war was fought for some ideals which are

not the case with the Second World War. The big

commercial bill board(‗commercial photograph‘) of

the Mosler safe company on Boylston street

advertising the safe with the picture of ―Hiroshima

boiling‖, referring to the mushroom-like smoke after

Hiroshima bombing, shows inhuman commercial

mentality. Helen Vender says, ―It is heartless in its

appropriation of Hiroshima for commercial purposes

(1987)‖ It is said that a big iron safe of the Mosler

Safe Company in the Tokyo central bank survived

the atomic blast. The ―Rock of the Ages‖, a

contemporary Christian song, is mockingly applied to

the safe that survived the blast to indicate its

toughness. ―The ditch‖ used earlier in the previous

stanza refers to the mass grave where Shaw was

buried with his black soldiers and the actual trench

dug up by soldiers during fighting battle, but here the

―ditch is nearer‖ indicates the fear of nuclear

annihilation or destruction of the poet. Lowell was

one of the ―Conscientious objectors‖, a group which

propagated during the World War-II that they had

74

full right to reject any law of the government which,

if they thought were, morally wrong. Lowell writes to

the USA president ―we are growing a chauvinistic

nation and are going to be the next of nuclear

annihilation‖. So, Lord Weary's Castle, with its

blending of oppositions to war, to the Puritan ethics,

and to materialism and greed, is Lowell's finest early

volume, one that earned him the Pulitzer Prize in

1947 (Poetry Foundation, 2014). He does the same

protest against war in the poem, ―For the Union

Dead‖.

Further, when Lowell says ―Space is nearer‖ it refers

to the launching of the Soviet Sputnik satellite in

1957 that undermines the US‘s convictions of

unshakeable superiority after the Second World War.

Lowell, perhaps wants to say that when he ‗crouches

his television set‘ to watch news, he finds no satellite

going up into the space from the USA, but ―drained

faces of Negro school children‖ going up like

balloons. Thus Lowell not only refers to the civil

right movement in the context of the black‘s fighting

against racial segregation and economic

discrimination in the USA (Shepherd, 2007) but also

regrets the racial discrimination or American racism

prevailing still in the age of science and technology.

With a frustrating image of Colonel Shaw Lowell

also, finally brings back, in the last stanza, the former

image of the Aquarium, he used to visit during his

childhood, and which later was destroyed in 1950s

when the author grew old and found the place

deserted as Sahara. Now ―Colonel Shaw is riding on

his bubble‖ and ―waits for the blessed break‖. The

ideals for which Shaw sacrificed his life are going to

be in vain, are impossible to be fulfilled in the USA

which is a society of people‘s devotion to machinery

and internal racism. The Shaw memorial, it seems to

the poet, is waiting for the blessed break‖. Emily

Dickinson, who belonged to the Calvinistic puritan

family, calls disillusionment ―a bubble burst‖. The

metaphor serves to capture the suddenness of

disappointment. In the New England puritan poetry

as of the poetry of Dickinson, bubble meant the

brevity of life, just as here Lowell uses the word

―bubble‖, Dickinson in the same way uses bubble

and ―produces the fragile, ephemeral, fleeting and

insubstantial quality of life in a multiplicity of

metaphors‖ (Mahmud, 2009, p.39):

Life is but strife—

Tis a bubble

Tis a dream—

And man is but a little boat

Which paddles down to the stream.

Lowell‘s use of the word ―bubble‖ in the last stanza

creates the same disappointment, writes about the

disillusionment of the dreams of Colonel Shaw in the

ephemeral and fleeting American materialistic

society, where still the black are fighting for their

right. This not what Colonel Shaw and the black

soldiers fought for in the civil war:

Colonel Shaw

is riding on his bubble,

he waits

for the blessed break.

Lowell not only expresses his own disappointment

but also becomes suspicious of the longevity of the

dreams of the union soldiers, including the longevity

of the existence and presence of the Shaw Memorial

in a society like his.

Just as the aquarium mentioned in the first stanza is

gone with its ―fish‖ and ―bubble‖ no more, the

memorial of Shaw will vaporize very soon from the

memory of people. The break of the memorial

whether by the construction works or not will be

blessing for Shaw to enter the timeless eternity of

ideals rather than being in the temporary city devoid

of ideals, regards Shaw memorial as ―fishbone‖ in its

throat. The famous Tudor Ford car and its huge

production due to its continuous demands among the

American folk changed the scenario of the American

street of the 20th

century. Here, the ―Car‖, which is

the sign of the contemporary materialistic

development in the USA, replaced the ―fish‖ and

―reptiles‖ or animals such as horses etc. that connote

or suggests the lost bucolic background, before the

huge demographic change of Boston and thereby the

physical change of landscape through construction

was happened. ―A savage servility‖ of people‘s mind

and passion due to the materialism is seen powerful

throughout America reflected by ―giant finned cars‖

that nose forward (move forward) like fish in the

street and lanes of the USA in huge numbers. Lowell

75

here reflects over the demographic and materialistic

change going on in the USA with a sense of

frustration and nihilism. Greed becomes the dominant

force behind all these changes according to Lowell.

Therefore people are enslaved to greed or destructive

desire like Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.

When the poem closes Lowell presents a very

individual reflection showing his dispirited self like

Philip Larkin in analyzing the materialistic change.

The poem closes with a ―memorable image of the

contemporary United States‖ (Perkins, 2006, p. 414):

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,

giant finned cars nose forward like fish;

a savage servility

slides by on grease.

A Society or Humanity: so materialistic, regressive,

cowed and self-hating: is riding on a bubble and, it

―will soon break‖ (Perkins, 2006, p.414). Lowell

wants to say humanity without noble ideas and ideals

is doomed to annihilation as he witnessed in the

Second World War by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki

bombing. So the ideals of Shaw‘s sacrifice, along

with the sacrifice of the Negro soldiers, are

celebrated and commemorated by Lowell to establish

some values in Lowell‘ devalued and debased

society.

CONCLUSIONS

In "After Enjoying Six or Seven Essays on Me," a

1977 Salmagundi essay, Lowell wrote that "looking

over my Selected Poems, about thirty years of

writing, my impression is that the thread that strings

it together is my autobiography"(Poetry

Foundation.2014). In ―For the Union Dead‖ the poet

presents also a drama of conflict between the poet‘s

personal aspirations and the actual tendency of

history with its socio-political events. History results

in change in different way and different manners in

people‘s attitude and beliefs and in the physical

world- geographically and demographically. People

in Lowell‘s time grew materialistic and commercial

that contradicts with the ideals of sacrifice and

martyrdom of the civil war hero, Colonel Gould

Shaw and his black soldiers. However, when History

changes the time and the history itself and brings

irresistible changes--whether good or bad-- in a

particular time period, individuals sometimes have

nothing to do but to reflect upon the changes, as

Lowell has done in this poem. Lowell cannot produce

a solution to the problems of the materialism and

people‘s too much greed and their indifference to

Shaw memorial but to comment on the changes

happening during his time. He expresses a deep

sorrow of mind with a sense of loss reflecting upon

not only the memory of Colonel Shaw and his

memorial but also different historical and political

public events of the contemporary America and the

past. Thus the poem becomes, in portraying the

devalued society of materialism lacking in certainty,

the history of the poet‘s private and the public events

making the poem supreme in Lowell‘s career because

of its extraordinary mingling/combination of vivid

images of the past and the present that covers

virtually history of over three hundred years of

America, not only the history of Lowell‘s own time.

REFRENCES 1. Axellrod, Steven Gould. (1978). On ―Skunk

hour‖: Retrived from: http: // www. english.

illinois .edumas / poets / gl / Lowell / skunk. htm.

2. Biography, (2014). Robert Lowell. Retrieved

from: http:// www. poetry foundation . org / bio /

robert - lowell.

3. Baym, Nina. (Ed.). (1989). Norton Anthology of

American Literature. Vol. 3. 3rd Edition, New

York: Norton Company.

4. Baym, Nina. (edit.). (2003). Norton Anthology of

American Literature. New York: Norton

Company.

5. Carson, Clayborne. (2014). American Civil rights

movement, Encyclopedia Britannica http: //

www. britannica. com / EB checked / topic /

1193 American - civil - rights - movement.

6. Lecouras,Peter.(2000).The postmodern turn

inRobertLowell‘spoetry:RetrievedFrom:www.hig

hbeam.com.

7. Mcpherson, Bydn. James. (n. d). A brief

overview of the civil war, Retrieved from: http: //

www. civil war. org / education / history / civil-

war overview / overview. html).

8. Mahmud, Masud. (2009). Launched into eternity:

a study of Emily Dickinson‘s poems and letters.

Dhaka : writers. ink, the university press.

9. Perkins, David. (2006). A History of Modern

Poetry, Modernism and after. Printed in India:

76

ABS publishers by arrangement with Harvard

University Press, USA.

10. Shepherd, Reginald. (2007, March 28). Robert

Lowell and the Massachusetts 55th . Retrived

from : http : // Reginald shepherd . blog spot .

com / 2007 / 03 / Robert – Lowell – and –

Massachusetts - 54th _ 28 . html.

APPENDIX (1) : THE SHAW MEMORIAL, Colonel Shaw

with the “Niggers” in the CIVIL WAR RELIEF, on which the

poet reflects:

Full Text of the poem: (2) For the Union Dead

“Relinquunt Omnia Servare Rem Publicam.”

The old South Boston Aquarium stands

in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are

boarded.

The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.

The airy tanks are dry.

Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;

my hand tingled

to burst the bubbles

drifting from the noses of the cowed, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still

for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom

of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,

I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,

yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting

as they cropped up tons of mush and grass

to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic

sandpiles in the heart of Boston.

A girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders

braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel

Shaw

and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry

on St. Gaudens‘ shaking Civil War relief,

propped by a plank splint against the garage‘s

earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,

half the regiment was dead;

at the dedication,

William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes

breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone

in the city‘s throat.

Its Colonel is as lean

as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,

a greyhound‘s gentle tautness;

he seems to wince at pleasure,

and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man‘s

lovely,

peculiar power to choose life and die--

when he leads his black soldiers to death,

he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens,

the old white churches hold their air

of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags

quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the

Republic.

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier

grow slimmer and younger each year--

wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets

and muse through their sideburns . . .

77

Shaw‘s father wanted no monument

except the ditch,

where his son‘s body was thrown

and lost with his ―niggers.‖

The ditch is nearer.

There are no statues for the last war here;

on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph

shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the ―Rock of Ages‖

that survived the blast. Space is nearer.

When I crouch to my television set,

the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like

balloons.

Colonel Shaw

is riding on his bubble,

he waits

for the blessèd break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,

giant finned cars nose forward like fish;

a savage servility

slides by on grease.