XII.
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 or Mercury,
Keep we must, if keep we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
XIII. THE DESERTER
"What sound awakened me, I wonder,
For now 'tis dumb."
"Wheels on the road most like, or thunder:
Lie down; 'twas not the drum.:
"Toil at sea and two in haven
And trouble far:
Fly, crow, away, and follow, raven,
And all that croaks for war."
"Hark, I heard the bugle crying,
And where am I?
My friends are up and dressed and dying,
And I will dress and die."
"Oh love is rare and trouble plenty
And carrion cheap,
And daylight dear at four-and-twenty:
Lie down again and sleep."
"Reach me my belt and leave your prattle:
Your hour is gone;
But my day is the day of battle,
And that comes dawning on.
"They mow the field of man in season:
Farewell, my fair,
And, call it truth or call it treason,
Farewell the vows that were."
"Ay, false heart, forsake me lightly:
'Tis like the brave.
They find no bed to joy in rightly
Before they find the grave.
"Their love is for their own undoing.
And east and west
They scour about the world a-wooing
The bullet in their breast.
"Sail away the ocean over,
Oh sail away,
And lie there with your leaden lover
For ever and a day."
XIV. THE CULPRIT
The night my father got me
His mind was not on me;
He did not plague his fancy
To muse if I should be
The son you see.
The day my mother bore me
She was a fool and glad,
For all the pain I cost her,
That she had borne the lad
That borne she had.
My mother and my father
Out of the light they lie;
The warrant would not find them,
And here 'tis only I
Shall hang so high.
Oh let not man remember
The soul that God forgot,
But fetch the county kerchief
And noose me in the knot,
And I will rot.
For so the game is ended
That should not have begun.
My father and my mother
They had a likely son,
And I have none.