Ichabod

Ichabod

Original Text
The Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Cambridge edition, ed. H. E. S. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1894): 186-87. PS 3250 E94 1894 Robarts Library.
2    Which once he wore!
3The glory from his gray hairs gone
4    Forevermore!
5Revile him not, the Tempter hath
6    A snare for all;
7And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
8    Befit his fall!
9Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage,
10    When he who might
11Have lighted up and led his age,
12    Falls back in night.
13Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
14    A bright soul driven,
15Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
16    From hope and heaven!
17Let not the land once proud of him
18    Insult him now,
19Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
20    Dishonored brow.
21But let its humbled sons, instead,
22    From sea to lake,
23A long lament, as for the dead,
24    In sadness make.
25Of all we loved and honored, naught
26    Save power remains;
27A fallen angel's pride of thought,
28    Still strong in chains.
29All else is gone; from those great eyes
30    The soul has fled:
31When faith is lost, when honor dies,
32    The man is dead!
33Then, pay the reverence of old days
34    To his dead fame;
35Walk backward, with averted gaze,
36    And hide the shame!

Notes

1] Ichabod is in Hebrew "inglorious" (1 Samuel 4:21). Whittier's opening recalls John Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I, where Satan says to his fellow fallen angel Beelzebub:
If thou beest he -- but oh how fall'n! how chang'd
From him who, in the happy realms of light,
Cloth'd with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads though bright! (84-87)

"This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the `compromise,' and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful clearness its sure results, -- the Slave Power arrogant and defiant, strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union, the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down, and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful rebuke.

But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in The Lost Occasion, I gave utterance to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in defence of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable." [Whittier's note, p. 186.] Back to Line

Publication Start Year
1850
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1998.
Rhyme