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In this paper I have tried to examine how Robert Lowell’s religious characteristics suffer and undergo transformations in his For the Union Dead as a poet. Lowell saw himself as the inheritor of a New England puritan tradition, and his poetry can be understood as a long, violent wrestling match with that tradition. It is a brief epic, in the sense of including history, yet it is also quite lyric at the same time. And it captures the complexities and the ironies of the American past and present. In this poetry Lowell sought renewed inspiration in New England Protestantism. By reexamining his early poetry filtered through the consciousness of his middle age, Lowell prepares in this transitional volume for a more definitive statement of religious themes. Therefore, For the Union Dead holds the key to a new understanding of Lowell and his poetry.