From Job II
"Is man more just than God? Is man more pureThan 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!"
About this text
From Job II is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3, Project Gutenberg ebook #21811; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lord Byron, From Job II, in The Giaour, and Other Poems (1816), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21811, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-works-3/from-job-ii.html, id L23966.
Form and metre
From Job II is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 --AABB pure · insecure · dustA · justA · nightB · lightB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "Is man more just than God? Is man more pure | 10 | ·········· |
| Than he who deems even Seraphs insecure? | 9 | ····/··/˘ |
| Creatures of clay--vain dwellers in the dust! | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| The moth survives you, and are ye more just? | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Things of a day! you wither ere the night, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Heedless and blind to Wisdom's wasted light!" | 10 | /˘···/˘/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.