If It Chance Your Eye Offend You

Text by A. E. Housman

A Shropshire Lad Song Collection

"If It Chance Your Eye Offend You" is a song by Beverly Benjamin Cole. It is the fourth in a set of eleven poems from A. E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad". If interested in sheet music, please email jackmor@umich.edu

Text

If it chance your eye offend you,
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound:
‘Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,
And many a balsam grows on ground.

And if your hand or foot offend you,
Cut it off, lad, and be whole;
But play the man, stand up and end you,
When your sickness is your soul.

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