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

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.