In accordance with the typical nature of Leigh Hunt's Romantic poetry, "About Ben Adhem" is a cheerful, optimistic piece that contains a remarkable amount of mystical joy for its brevity. Loosely based on a historical figure named Ibraham ibn Adham, the poem tells the story of a man awakening from a dream to discover a celestial vision within his bedroom: an angel sent from God, writing in a golden book that contains the names of all people who love God. When Adhem inquires about his status in the book, the angel responds that his name is not present. Undaunted, Abou asks that the angel record him as someone who loves 'his fellow men,' if not God. The next day, the angel returns and shows Abou that his name now leads the list of people whom God's love has blessed.
In typical Huntian style, the moral of the story is straightforward and uplifting: loving one's neighbors is essentially equivalent to loving God. This seemingly confusing equivocation is made clear by a particular point of Christian doctrine: the imago dei. When God created Man, He is said to have made him in His own image. The imago dei, or "image of God," is therefore a quality about man that reflects his Creator. There is, after all, something of God within each one of us, and it is this particular quality that lends Hunt's assertion credence. The point is perhaps better put by Victor Hugo, who writes in Les Misérables that "To love another person is to see the face of God."
Although Hunt was never one of the greatest Romantic poets, his work still exists today, despite being criticized for being overly naïve and optimistic. It's true that his work, as exemplified by "Abou Ben Adhem," carries an air of lighthearted affirmation that seems shallow compared to the depths of the works of the more acclaimed Romantic poets. It does, however, still have its time and place, and poems such as these may serve, if nothing more, as a small source of joy to the modern reader.
