Lines on A. B.

When we went down to London in midst of the champaign
A brother looked at me as though I had been Cain,
And in a voice of thunder, as I sat at the table,
He fiercely asked of me “where is your Brother Abel?”
To which I did reply “I’m not my brother’s keeper,
But at home you’ll find him, in his bed asleep, sir.”

Where this text comes from

First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established. [1]

Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.

Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/james-mcintyre_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).

Earlier sources (3)

This poem as JSON or plain text. Line anchors #L1–#L6.

Cite this poem

James McIntyre (1828?–1906). “Lines on A. B..” First published in Musings on the Banks of Canadian Thames (1884). Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/james-mcintyre/lines-on-a-b/. Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.

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