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Collected poems

By Austin Dobson: Ninth edition
  

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509

A MADRIGAL

[Who can dwell with greatness! Greatness is too high]

[_]

[Written for Choral Songs in Honour of Queen Victoria, 1899, and set to music by Sir Hubert Parry .]

Who can dwell with greatness! Greatness is too high;
Flowers are for the meadow, suns are for the sky;—
Ah! but there is greatness in this land of ours,
High as is the sunlight, humble as the flowers!
Queen, of thee the fable! Lady, thine the fate!
Royal, and yet lowly, lowly, and yet great;—
Great in far dominion, great in bannered years,
Greater still as woman, greatest in thy tears!