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| 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. | 5 |
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| 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. | 10 |
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| 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. | 15 |
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| 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. | 20 |
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| 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.’ | 25 |
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