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by Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936)

The laws of God, the laws of man
Language: English 
The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?
Please yourselves, say I, and they
Need only look the other way.
But no, they will not; they must still
Wrest their neighbour to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
And how am I to face the odds
Of man's bedevilment and God's?
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
They will be master, right or wrong;
Though both are foolish, both are strong.
And since, my soul, we cannot fly
To Saturn nor to Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936), no title, appears in Last Poems, no. 12, first published 1922 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Ernst Bacon (1898 - 1990), "Foreign laws", 196-? [
     text not verified 
    ]
  • by Joyce Barrell (b. 1917), "The laws of God, the laws of man" [voice, unaccompanied] [
     text not verified 
    ]

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2008-08-18
Line count: 24
Word count: 161

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