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.