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John Greenleaf Whittier's "Ichabod" · The Daily Poem

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sean Johnson and today is Friday, January 26, 2024.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is by John Greenleaf Whittier, born 1807, died 1892.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whittier's a member of the Fireside Poets, a group of American poets working
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  SPEAKER_00: Mostly in the 19th century, the first group of poets to establish a kind of American school of poetry and win notoriety both continentally and abroad for the quality of their poetry.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: The fireside poets were really the first American poets who could rival the Brits.
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  SPEAKER_00: This group also included the great Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and some, sometimes depending on who you ask, a few others, including Ralph Waldo Emerson,
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  SPEAKER_00: and of course John Greenleaf Whittier himself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today probably one of the less recognizable names in that list and one of the less read and remembered fireside poets which is a shame and hopefully if he's a stranger to you or you to him maybe today's poem will be a nice introduction that will
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  SPEAKER_00: create a lasting friendship.
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  SPEAKER_00: Holmes himself, or rather poor Whittier, I'm even mixing him up with the other fellows.
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  SPEAKER_00: Whittier himself was a Quaker and an energetic and outspoken abolitionist before the American Civil War.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can
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  SPEAKER_00: hear in many of his poems that sense of social concern and zeal for the dignity of his fellow man.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today's poem is an interesting example of that zeal as it is asking people to do a sometimes difficult thing and that is to speak
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  SPEAKER_00: well of a despised person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ichabod So fallen, so lost, the light withdrawn which once he wore
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  SPEAKER_00: The glory from his gray hair is gone forevermore.
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  SPEAKER_00: Revile him not, the tempter hath a snare for all, And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, befit his fall.
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  SPEAKER_00: O dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might have lighted up and led his age Falls back in night.
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  SPEAKER_00: Scorn, would the angels laugh to mark a bright soul driven, fiend-goated down the endless dark from hope and heaven?
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  SPEAKER_00: Let not the land, once proud of him, insult him now, nor brand with deeper shame his dim, dishonored brow.
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  SPEAKER_00: But let its humbled sons instead, from sea to lake, a long lament as for the dead in sadness make.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of all we loved and honored, not save power remains.
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  SPEAKER_00: A fallen angel's pride of thought still strong in chains.
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  SPEAKER_00: All else is gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: From those great eyes the soul has fled.
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  SPEAKER_00: When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then pay the reverence of old days to his dead flame.
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  SPEAKER_00: Walk backward with averted gaze and hide the shame.
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  SPEAKER_00: The name Ichabod may be referring to a particular individual here, but is more likely a kind of archetypal stand-in.
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  SPEAKER_00: The name, which maybe is familiar to a lot of Americans as the name of the main character in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is translated
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  SPEAKER_00: from Hebrew originally as no glory or the absence of glory or even glory has departed which is the case maybe in two senses in this poem the subject may be a historical figure
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  SPEAKER_00: that Whittier has in mind.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know who it is, and it certainly has a universal application.
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  SPEAKER_00: But in this case, a man has died, in which sense the glory has departed with his soul
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  SPEAKER_00: from the body now before us.
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  SPEAKER_00: But he seems also to be a man who fell from glory even before his death and is Ichabod perhaps in two senses.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it's for that reason that the poet invites us to reverse that departure of glory or at least not to hasten it further.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he counsels that old
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  SPEAKER_00: old advice, don't speak ill of the dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: This fellow made a lot of enemies or lost a lot of friends in whatever fall from grace he experienced.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the logic of the speaker goes, hasn't he then been through enough?
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  SPEAKER_00: If you live long enough, you will inevitably
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  SPEAKER_00: attend or be invited to attend the funeral of a person like this who perhaps was not very nice or harmed a lot of people and the concern is that either at this funeral people will say only bad things about the departed which is a terrible prospect but almost as terrible is
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  SPEAKER_00: the prospect of hearing people say good things that aren't true and to find any kind of compromise or happy medium is a difficulty that if we're lucky we don't have to wrestle with very often.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I think John Greenleaf Whittier puts it in a really helpful
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  SPEAKER_00: context, the idea is not to lie, but to have pity on the one who was ensnared by the tempter, he says, because that same tempter has a snare for us all, and the dead have suffered enough.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think there's some grace and some wisdom there, though it's
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  SPEAKER_00: a
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  SPEAKER_00: as I prepare to face the greatest trial a living soul can, the judgment that follows after death.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here's Ichabod one more time.
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  SPEAKER_00: So fallen, so lost, the light withdrawn which once he wore.
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  SPEAKER_00: The glory from his gray hair is gone forevermore.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Revile him not, the tempter hath a snare for all, In pitying tears not scorn and wrath befit his fall.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: O dumb be passion's stormy rage, When he who might have lighted up and led his age Falls back in night.
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  SPEAKER_00: Scorn would the angel's laugh To mark a bright soul driven, A fiend goaded down the endless dark From hope and heaven.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let not the land, once proud of him, insult him now, Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, dishonoured brow, But let its humbled sons instead, from sea to lake, a long lament As for the dead in sadness make.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of all we loved and honoured, not safe power remains, A fallen angel's pride of thought, still strong in chains.
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  SPEAKER_00: That last stanza there, an allusion to the book of Genesis,
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  SPEAKER_00: When the sons of Noah find their father asleep and in a compromising position, they walk backward with a blanket held between them to cover his nakedness without gazing upon it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in the preceding stanza, there's a kind of Turner revelation in the poem that suggests maybe the person in question isn't actually departed from this life.
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  SPEAKER_00: When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: Which could mean either that the man in question is dead in spirit but not in body and this exhortation to speak well of them and cover their shame may be a strategy for sparing them from greater bitterness or resentment or corruption or
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a kind of hopeful notion that even though the man is dead and has left behind a mixed legacy, the faithful and honorific treatment of his memory might still preserve that which was best about him.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sound advice.
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  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Poem.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
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  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with more poems for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: To listen to past episodes or to support this show, please visit dailypoempod.substack.com.
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  SPEAKER_00: On behalf of our whole team at Goldberry Studios, I'm Sean Johnson.
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  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, happy reading.