Section 3 Summary

Lines 45-47

All you recovered from Poseidon died
With you, my cousin, and the harrowed brine
Is fruitless on the blue beard of the god, 

• The drowned sailor had some victory; that's what he "recovered" from Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, but ultimately it still defeated him. The poem again uses an allusion to a deity when referring to the water. Men are just no match for it, in the end.
• Could the speaker be saying that the sea is like a god that kills indiscriminately, just because it can? 
• He calls the "brine" (a.k.a. salty water) "harrowed," which basically means it's tortured and disturbed. The water is "fruitless" because it doesn't produce anything; it only destroys, just like Bluebeard, the character in French folklore that murders his wives whom the speaker alludes to in line 47. The sea is a place of death, and takes lives like a vengeful, powerful being.

Lines 48-51

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

• The water stretches all the way from Nantucket to "castles in Spain," which gives a sense of the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.
• It's also a literal image of the sea, which stretches farther than the eye can see. Lowell is emphasizing the immensity, and possibility, of the oceans, where in the lines before he has emphasized the harshness of the waters.
• But he isn't done emphasizing the sea's violence; the wind on the tide is so powerful that it's shooting the eelgrass (a type of seaweed) like bullets.
• Line 51 introduces a neologism. On our earth, the seas move and the change of seasons make a type of clock, so we get "waterclock." Sometimes, poets just gotta invent a word when the exact right one doesn't exist. (Shakespeare did it all the time.) 
• Notice we've jumped into another change in rhyme and meter? Yep, that's Lowell, always keeping you on your toes. Check out "Form and Meter" for more.

Lines 52-55

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 

• On this huge "waterclock" the salt and sand are still being blown around. In fact, it's so rough, Lowell describes the sea acting like a whip, "lashing" the earth. 
• Warships, like fishing boats, are attempting to overpower the sea, but here they are being thrown about just the same. And who is throwing them about? 
• Why, it's the "great God." A major analogy throughout the poem involves using anything that's greater than man as a representation of the sea. Or, are the sea and the wind just the tools of these deities? Either way, the speaker is letting us know we are pretty much powerless against it.
• He's also personifying time here, saying that time is sorry for its wrongs in the past. But apparently it doesn't matter to the sea, or to the god in control of the sea. These "contritions" (apologies) are still turned blue (literally, in the water). Yikes.

Lines 56-59

Whatever it was these Quaker sailors lost
In the mad scramble of their lives. They died
When time was open-eyed,
Wooden and childish; only bones abide

• The speaker doesn't say exactly what it was that these Quaker sailors lost (besides their lives). Instead, he categorizes the time in which they died as a more simple one, when people were more childish. His use of the adjective "wooden" may be an attempt to make us think of simple, sturdy things like wooden toys or even wooden boats. Describing the sailors as childish and simple also makes them seem all the more weak against the sea, doesn't it?
• In the end, all that's left of these Quaker sailors is their "bones." Anyone feeling cheery yet?

Lines 60-63

There, in the nowhere, where their boats were tossed
Sky-high, where mariners had fabled news
Of IS, the whited monster. What it cost
Them is their secret. In the sperm-whale's slick 

• He's baaaack: the white whale from Moby Dick has returned, and he's ready to cause some trouble.
• In line 62, he refers to the whale as "IS," which is an allusion to poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' line "What Christ is […] IS immortal diamond" from "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire." 
• So, basically, the speaker is comparing the white whale to Christ. In the Bible, Christ came from God and also was God. The whale is as powerful as the sea, here, and man is no match for either deity. 
• Again he mentions that the fight with the sea and the whale cost these sailors something more than their lives, but he won't say what that something was; it's a "secret" (tricky guy).
• He does say that the sailors are "There, in the nowhere," which may mean heaven, or hell, or even limbo. Or it could just mean that they are dead, and therefore not on earth anymore.

Lines 64-65

I see the Quakers drown and hear their cry:
"If God himself had not been on our side, 

• To the speaker, the whale's "slick" (the stuff that rolls off its back) brings to mind the image of the Quaker sailors drowning; no longer is it his cousin he sees, but the sailors of old, the same ones who used the simple wooden ships.
• In fact, he hasn't mentioned his cousin in most of the stanza. This section broadens the scope of the poem, and the frequent allusions to Moby Dick, Greek mythology, and the Bible indicate that the poem isn't just about his cousin, but about the many drowned at sea. 
• The drowning Quakers still think that God is on their side. If he was on their side, wouldn't he saving them? Hmm. Let's read on…

Lines 66-68

If God himself had not been on our side,
When the Atlantic rose against us, why,
Then it had swallowed us up quick."

• Notice the repetition in lines 65 and 66? The drowning sailors strongly believe that God is on their side, because he did not drown them quickly. Instead, he gave them time to praise him. 
• It's also an allusion to the Bible, again. Psalm 124 begins, "If the Lord had not been on our side." The Quakers drowned despite their religion and despite believing that God was on their side. 
• The section ends with the final words of the sailors. We don't get to hear the speaker's take on their words; are we supposed to think the Quakers were foolish? After all, earlier in the section he did call them "childish." It sounds like he is saying they died in vain, full of foolish belief that their death was God's will. 
• In any case, they're long gone. We began the section in their graveyard, long after their deaths. If they died pursing the white whale, and the white whale stands for Christ, then they died pursuing God. It didn't work out too well for them. The speaker again reminds us that the sea is more powerful than we are, even if we think we have God behind us.