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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.

— Robert Lowell For the Union Dead (1964)

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More quotes by Robert Lowell

If we see light at the end of the tunnel,
It's the light of the oncoming train.

Day by Day (1977)

We are like a lot of wild
spiders crying together,
but without tears.

For the Union Dead (1964)

No one like one's mother and father ever lived.

History (1973)

I will catch Christ with a greased worm.

Lord Weary's Castle (1946)

Your old-fashioned tirade—
loving, rapid, merciless—
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.

Life Studies (1959)

All Robert Lowell quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Lowell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.