| A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896. |
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| XI. On your midnight pallet lying |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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