by Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936)
On your midnight pallet lying
Language: English
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. 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.
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View text with all available footnotesText Authorship:
- by Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936), no title, appears in A Shropshire Lad, no. 11, first published 1896 [author's text checked 2 times against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Robert F. Baksa (b. 1938), "On your midnight pallet lying", from Housman Songs, no. 3 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933 - 2010), "On your midnight pallet lying", c1933 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Ivor (Bertie) Gurney (1890 - 1937), "On your midnight pallet", 1907, published 1998 [ voice and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Charles Wilfred Orr (1893 - 1976), "On your midnight pallet lying", 1925, published 1927 [ tenor and piano ], from Five Songs from "A Shropshire Lad", no. 5, note: publication in the set occurred in 1959 [sung text not yet checked]
- by John Theodore Livingston Raynor (1909 - 1970), "On Your Midnight Pallet Lying", op. 513 (1958) [sung text not yet checked]
- by John Ramsden Williamson (1929 - 2015), "On your midnight pallet lying" [ baritone and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 14
Word count: 79