In Boston serpents whistle at the cold.

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Where the Rainbow Ends (l. 21). . . Modern American Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (8th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.)

It was a Maine lobster town?
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands.

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Water (l. 1-4). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

Remember? We sat on a slab of rock.
From this distance in time,
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,

but it was only
the usual gray rock

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Water (l. 13-18). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

What can the dove of Jesus give
You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live,
The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Where the Rainbow Ends (l. 28-30). . . Modern American Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (8th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.)

the scythers, Time and Death,
Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath;

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Where the Rainbow Ends (l. 8-9). . . Modern American Poetry. Louis Untermeyer, ed. (8th rev. ed., 1962) Harcourt, Brace and Company.)

We wished our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water was too cold for us.

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Water (l. 29-32). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.)

see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Waking in the Blue (l. 45-50). . . Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, The. Helen Vendler, ed. (1985) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)

Better dressed and stacking birch,
or lost with the Faithful at Church?
anywhere, but somewhere else!

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Waking Early Sunday Morning (l. 43-45). . . Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, The, 1945-1980. D. J. Enright, comp. (1980) Oxford University Press.)

Absence! My heart grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Waking in the Blue (l. 8-9). . . Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry, The. Helen Vendler, ed. (1985) The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.)

Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;

(Robert Lowell (1917-1977), U.S. poet. Waking Early Sunday Morning (l. 105-106). . . Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse, The, 1945-1980. D. J. Enright, comp. (1980) Oxford University Press.)