MOTHER of God! no lady thou: <br /> Common woman of common earth <br />Our Lady ladies call thee now, <br /> But Christ was never of gentle birth; <br /> A common man of the common earth. <br /> <br />For God’s ways are not as our ways: <br /> The noblest lady in the land <br />Would have given up half her days, <br /> Would have cut off her right hand, <br /> To bear the child that was God of the land. <br /> <br />Never a lady did He choose, <br />Only a maid of low degree, <br />So humble she might not refuse <br />The carpenter of Galilee: <br />A daughter of the people, she. <br /> <br />Out she sang the song of her heart. <br /> Never a lady so had sung. <br />She knew no letters, had no art; <br /> To all mankind, in woman’s tongue, <br /> Hath Israelitish Mary sung. <br /> <br />And still for men to come she sings, <br />Nor shall her singing pass away. <br />‘He hath fillàd the hungry with good things’— <br />O listen, lords and ladies gay!— <br />‘And the rich He hath sent empty away.’<br /><br />Mary Elizabeth Coleridge<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-lady/
