Last Poems (Housman)/The Culprit

by Alfred Edward Housman

XIV
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.