A. E. Housman (1859–1936). A Shropshire Lad. 1896.
XI. On your midnight pallet lying
O
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;
Therefore, since I go to-morrow,
Pity me before.
The far dwelling, let me say—
Once, if here the couch is gravel,
In a kinder bed I lay,
And the breast the darnel smothers
Rested once upon another’s
When it was not clay.