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.