Any Father to Any Son

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 presage
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,
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
Thou to the darker bars art blind.