Songs From Pippa Passes

13 All service ranks the same with God:

14 If now, as formerly He trod

15 Paradise, His presence fills

16 Our earth, each only as God wills

17 Can work — God's puppets, best and worst,

18 Are we: there is no last nor first.

19 The year's at the spring

20 And day's at the morn:

21 Morning's at seven;

22 The hillside's dew-pearled;

23 The lark's on the wing;

24 The snail's on the thorn:

25 God's in His heaven —

26 All's right with the world!

27Give her but a least excuse to love me!

28 When — where —

29How — can this arm establish her above me,

30 If fortune fixed her as my lady there,

31There already, to eternally reprove me?

32 ("Hist!" — said Kate the queen;

33But "Oh," cried the maiden, binding her tresses,

34 "'Tis only a page that carols unseen,

35Crumbling your hounds their messes!")

36Is she wronged? — To the rescue of her honour,

37 My heart!

38Is she poor? — What costs it to be styled a donor?

39 Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.

40But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!

41 ("Nay, list!" — bade Kate the queen;

42And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,

43 "'Tis only a page that carols unseen,

44Fitting your hawks their jesses!")