Alfred Edward Housman: Collected Lyrics
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Public-domain lyrics

On your midnight pallet lying

Alfred Edward Housman

“On your midnight pallet lying” as printed in A Shropshire Lad (1896).

Alfred Edward Housman: Collected Lyrics Text 31 1896 · historical text
Public domainSong lyricsVictorian song
Complete public-domain lyrics

This text comes from A Shropshire Lad, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.

Verse 1

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;

Therefore, since I go to-morrow,

Pity me before.

Verse 2

In the land to which I travel,

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.

Credits

Written by Alfred Edward Housman

Words by Alfred Edward Housman. Historical text published in A Shropshire Lad (1896); public domain. No claim to a modern recording or arrangement.

Source & text edition

A Shropshire Lad (1896), “On your midnight pallet lying”

A. E. Housman (1859-1936) died more than 89 years ago; his works entered the public domain in life-plus-70 jurisdictions in 2007, and the 1896 first edition is in the public domain in the United States. Entries credited to other hands are held unless their author died more than 70 years ago.

How to read this historical text and its source

Read the source on Wikisource

View copyright evidence · Transcription terms (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Retrieved 2026-10-27. Line spacing and section labels are adapted for reading. The displayed text follows the linked edition. Editorial notes and abstract artwork are by 52lyrics.
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