Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)

MOTHER of God! no lady thou:

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.

For God’s ways are not as our ways.

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.

Never a lady did He choose,

Only a maid of low degree,

So humble she might not refuse

The carpenter of Galilee:

A daughter of the people, she.

Out she sang the song of her heart.

Never a lady so had sung.

She knew no letters, had no art;

To all mankind, in woman’s tongue,

Hath Israelitish Mary sung.

And still for men to come she sings,

Nor shall her singing pass away.

‘He hath fillèd the hungry with good things’—

Oh, listen, lords and ladies gay!—

‘And the rich He hath sent empty away.’