*sits down on a stool. takes a sip from a cup of water.*
When I was one-and-twenty
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
The Laws of God, The Laws of Man
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 most 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 neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hellfire.
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 flee
To Saturn or to Mercury,
Keep we must, If we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
When I was one-and-twenty
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.
The Laws of God, The Laws of Man
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 most 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 neighbor to their will,
And make me dance as they desire
With jail and gallows and hellfire.
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 flee
To Saturn or to Mercury,
Keep we must, If we can,
These foreign laws of God and man.
