From those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!

In these lines, Whittier equates moral integrity with true life. The “great eyes” suggest a once-vital presence now emptied—an outward sign that the inner self (“the soul”) has departed. The couplet that follows makes the claim explicit: faith and honor are not decorative virtues but the animating principles of personhood. When they are forfeited, the individual may remain physically alive yet is, in Whittier’s moral reckoning, spiritually and ethically “dead.” The passage reflects Whittier’s characteristic didactic tone, using stark, memorable antithesis to press a Quaker-inflected conviction that conscience and fidelity to principle define human worth.