What is "Forgive my Guilt" by Robert P. Tristram Coffin?

"Forgive My Guilt" by Robert P. Tristram Coffin is a poem. Coffin wrote the poem in the first person. The poem describes a man who is working through his guilt over killing birds as a child.

In "Forgive My Guilt," Coffin writes that the person in the poem doesn't know what sin is but has a suspicion that his action of shooting birds was one of them. The character in the poem works through this guilty feeling. Throughout the poem, comparisons are made to assist him in painting pictures in the readers' minds. Coffin won a Pulitzer Prize in 1936, and he taught workshops on poetry.