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 neighbor 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
A E Houseman.