Poem by Alfred Edward Housman

Last Poems. 14. 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.

1. More Poems. 33. On Forelands High in Heaven
2. A Shropshire Lad. 56. The Day of Battle
3. More Poems. 17. Bells in Tower at Evening Toll
4. Last Poems. 39. When Summer’s End Is Nighing
5. More Poems. 21. The World Goes None the Lamer

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