Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (18611907)Our Lady
M
Common woman of common earth!
Our Lady ladies call thee now,
But Christ was never of gentle birth;
A common man of the common earth.
The noblest lady in the land
Would have given up half her days,
Would have cut off her right hand,
To bear the Child that was God of the land.
Only a maid of low degree,
So humble she might not refuse
The carpenter of Galilee.
A daughter of the people, she.
Never a lady so had sung.
She knew no letters, had no art;
To all mankind, in woman’s tongue,
Hath Israelitish Mary sung.
Nor shall her singing pass away.
He hath filled the hungry with good things—
Oh, listen, lords and ladies gay!—
And the rich he hath sent empty away.