Lord!

Seaham, Feb. 17, 1815.

A SPIRIT PASSED BEFORE ME.

FROM JOB.

I.

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:

II.

"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!"

FOOTNOTES:

[287] {381} [In a manuscript note to a letter of Byron's, dated June 11,
1814, Wedderburn Webster writes, "I _did_ take him to Lady Sitwell's
party.... He there for the first time saw his cousin, the beautiful Mrs.
Wilmot [who had appeared in mourning with numerous spangles in her
dress]. When we returned to ... the Albany, he ... desired Fletcher to
give him a _tumbler of brandy_, which he drank at once to Mrs. Wilmot's
health.... The next day he wrote some charming lines upon her, 'She
walks in beauty,' etc."--_Letters_, 1899, iii. 92, note 1.

Anne Beatrix, daughter and co-heiress of Eusebius Horton, of Catton
Hall, Derbyshire, married Byron's second cousin, Robert John Wilmot
(1784-1841), son of Sir Robert Wilmot of Osmaston, by Juliana, second
daughter of the Hon. John Byron, and widow of the Hon. William Byron.
She died February 4, 1871.

Nathan (_Fugitive Pieces_, 1829, pp. 2, 3) has a note to the effect that
Byron, while arranging the first edition of the _Melodies_, used to ask
for this song, and would not unfrequently join in its execution.]

[le] {382}
_The Harp the Minstrel Monarch swept,_
_The first of men, the loved of Heaven,_
_Which Music cherished while she wept_.--[MS. M.]

[lf] {383} _It told the Triumph_----.--[MS. M.]

[288] ["When Lord Byron put the copy into my hand, it terminated with
this line. This, however, did not complete the verse, and I asked him to
help out the melody. He replied, 'Why, I have sent you to Heaven--it
would be difficult to go further!' My attention for a few moments was
called to some other person, and his Lordship, whom I had hardly missed,
exclaime