XI. On your midnight pallet lying. Housman, A. E. 1896. A Shropshire Lad

A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.

XI. On your midnight pallet lying


ON your midnight pallet lying,
Listen, and undo the door:
Lads that waste the light in sighing
In the dark should sigh no more;
Night should ease a lover’s sorrow;	5
Therefore, since I go to-morrow,
Pity me before.

In the land to which I travel,
The far dwelling, let me say—
Once, if here the couch is gravel,	10
In a kinder bed I lay,
And the breast the darnel smothers
Rested once upon another’s
When it was not clay.