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Songs of Labor, and Other Poems
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Historical SummaryWhittier early became identified with the anti-slavery crusade. The pathetic earnestness of these verses on Webster’s supposed apostasy in his seventh-of-March speech is typical of the feeling with which the speech was received among the antislavery radicals, who had previously considered Webster a stanch advocate and defender of all constitutional measures against slavery.—For Whittier, see W. S. Kennedy, John G. Whittier, the Poet of Freedom; Contemporaries, III, No. 178.—Bibliography as in No. 19 above.
"Thy Glory is Departed" (1850)
BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
SO fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn Which once he wore! The glory from his gray hairs gone Forevermore!
Revile him not—the Tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit his fall!
Oh! dumb be passion’s stormy rage, When he who might Have lighted up and led his age, Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark A bright soul driven, Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, From hope and heaven!
Let not the land, once proud of him, Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, Dishonored brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead, From sea to lake, A long lament, as for the dead, In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honored, nought Save power remains— A fallen angel’s pride of thought, Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes The soul has fled: When faith is lost, when honor dies, The man is dead!
Then, pay the reverence of old days To his dead fame; Walk backward, with averted gaze, And hide the shame!
John G. Whittier, Ichabod, in his (Boston, 1850), 93–94.
Chicago: John Greenleaf Whittier, Songs of Labor, and Other Poems in American History Told by Contemporaries, ed. Albert Bushnell Hart (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1903), Original Sources, accessed May 3, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=R1BL1SKKYPW7Y32.
MLA: Whittier, John Greenleaf. Songs of Labor, and Other Poems, in American History Told by Contemporaries, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Vol. 4, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1903, Original Sources. 3 May. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=R1BL1SKKYPW7Y32.
Harvard: Whittier, JG, Songs of Labor, and Other Poems. cited in 1903, American History Told by Contemporaries, ed. , The Macmillan Company, New York. Original Sources, retrieved 3 May 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=R1BL1SKKYPW7Y32.
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