A Spirit Passed Before Me [From Job]

A spirit passed before me: I beheld

The face of immortality unveiled--

Deep sleep came down on every eye save mine--

And there it stood,--all formless--but divine:

Along my bones the creeping flesh did quake;

And as my damp hair stiffened, thus it spake:

"Is man more just than God? Is man more pure

Than He who deems even Seraphs insecure?

Creatures of clay--vain dwellers in the dust!

The moth survives you, and are ye more just?

Things of a day! you wither ere the night,

Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!"

Lord Byron

Lord Byron (born January 22, 1788, London, England—died April 19, 1824, Missolonghi, Greece) British Romantic poet and satirist whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24). "I was born for opposition,” Byron proclaimed in Don Juan, Canto XV. The outstanding elements of his poetry both support his self-analysis and insure his enduring reputation. As a major political and social satirist, he repeatedly denounces war, tyranny, and hypocrisy. As an untiring champion of liberty, he firmly believed that “Revolution / Alone can save the earth from hell’s pollution”, a tenet he defended with his life.

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A Spirit Passed Before Me [From Job]

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