Belated Conscience

Robert William Service

To buy for school a copy-book
          I asked my Dad for two-pence;
He gave it with a gentle look,
          Although he had but few pence.
’Twas then I proved myself a crook
          And came a moral cropper,
I bought a penny copy-book
          And blued the other copper.

I spent it on a sausage roll
          Gulped down with guilt suggestion,
To the damnation of my soul
          And awful indigestion.
Poor Dad! His job was hard to hold;
          His mouths to feed were many;
Were he alive a millionfold
          I’d pay him for his penny.

Now nigh the grave I think with grief,
          Though other sins are many,
I am a liar and a thief
          ‘Cause once I stole a penny:
Yet be he pious as a friar
          It is my firm believing,
That every man has been a liar
          And most of us done thieving.

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