Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ICHABOD: A MONODY, by ALFRED DENNIS GODLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ICHABOD: A MONODY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Now is the time when everything is glad
Last Line: -- it is not far from here to jericho.
Alternate Author Name(s): Godley, A. D.
Subject(s): Class Struggle; Labor & Laborers; Work; Workers


Now is the time when everything is glad,
Their vernal greenery the fields renew,
Each feathered songster chants with livelier tone,
And lambkins leap and cloudless skies are blue,
And all is gay and cheerful: -- I alone
Am singularly sad;
Mine erstwhile happiness and calm content
Yields to a sense of sorrowful surprise:
Things that I thought were thus, are otherwise:
And all is grief, and disillusionment.

For He, who did in everything surpass
Our common world, -- the Good, the Truly Great,
The Working Man, who shamed with standards high
Our obscurantists unregenerate, --
Is not, 'twould seem, better than you, or I,
Or any other ass:
The vision 's faded, as a snowflake melts;
Fallen is that idol from his high renown:
He hath waxed fat, and kicked, and tumbled down,
And we must seek ensamples somewhere else!

Where is it, Comrades! in this direful day --
That noble zeal for academic lore,
That reverence due for discipline, in which
He used to shine conspicuously o'er
The Brainless Athlete and the Idle Rich?
O, does he now display
That ample breadth of calm impartial view,
That sober judgment and that balanced mind,
Which we were taught that we should always find,
O R-skin College, domiciled in you?

I have a Pupil: when his mental food
Fails (as it will) his appetite to sate,
What! does that patient much-enduring elf
Proclaim a strike? set pickets at my gate?
Boycott my lectures? give them for himself?
(Full oft I wish he would:)
Nay -- when he finds those lectures dull and flat,
He asks no other: new ones might be worse:
Too well he knows that Cosmos' ordered course
Meant him to hear, and me to talk like that.

Also I own I'm disappointed by
Your friends and patrons, British Working Man!
For they, methought, were champions of the Cause,
Fighters for Freedom, foremost in the van,
Not servile scruplers, bound by rules and laws,
Not men who dealt in dry
Respectable traditions: leaders true,
No timid Moderates, who would define
Too strict a boundary 'twixt Mine and Thine,
Potential martyrs, heart and soul with you: --

'Twas all illusion: they would feed you with
Mere talks on Temperance: when your spirit's wings
Would soar to Sociology alone,
Whereby will come that blessed state of things
When none has property to call his own,
They give you -- Adam Smith ...
These too are fall'n: ah me, that I should live
To hear our brightest Radicals and best
By angry Labour in such terms addressed
As might apply to a Conservative!

To this conclusion I perforce must come,
'Twere best we parted: seeing that we, 'twould seem,
Haply have no appreciation of
Your high ambitions and your aims supreme,
Nor can we hope that you should greatly love
Our mental pabulum:
Depart, O Comrades! to some happier sphere
Where you can still be nobly on the make,
And mine, or plumb, or brew, or butch, or bake, --
Best to depart, and leave us mouldering here!

Yea, if ye scorn our learning overmuch,
Misguided sons of horny-handed toil!
Yet discontented with your lowly lot
Still pine to burn the sad nocturnal oil
'Mid academic culture, or 'mid what
Describes itself as such --
Go elsewhere, O my brothers! only go
To Bath, to Birmingham -- where'er the Don
Teaches the sacred art of Getting On, --
-- It is not far from here to Jericho.





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