Francis Burdett Money-Coutts (1852-1923). Any Father to Any Son. Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. 1922. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Any Father to Any Son

By Francis Burdett Money-Coutts (1852–1923)


FOR thee a crown of thorns I wear,
And thought imperative constrains
My labouring heart for thee to bear
The travail of a woman’s pains;

For with intolerable preságe	5
Of all the amazements of thy life,
The pits of ancient woe I gauge,
The vast impediments of strife;

Or else in dreadful dreaming cast,
I see thy form before me fly,	10
By prescience never overpast
Nor fleetest foot that love can ply.

Still as thy shadow must I run,
When all the shadows fall behind,
And in the rich seductive sun	15
Thou to the darker bars art blind.