To My Son

(AGED SIXTEEN)

Dear boy unborn: the son but of my dream,
    Promise of yet unrisen day,
Come, sit beside me; let us talk, and seem
    To take such cares and courage for your way,
    As some year yet we may.

As some year yet, when you, my son to be,
    Look out on life, and turn to go,
And I, grown grey, shall wish you well, and see
    Myself imprinted as but she could know
    To make amendment so.

I see you then, your sixteen years alight
    With limbs all true and golden hair,
And you, unborn, I will, this April night,
    Tell of the faith and honour you must wear
    For love, whose light you bear.

Beauty you have; as, mothered so, could face
    Or limbs or hair be otherwise?
Years gone, dear boy, there was a virgin grace
    Worth Homer's laurel under western skies
    To wander and devise.

Beauty you have. Cherish it as divine,
    Wash it with dews of diligence,
Not vainly, but because it is the sign
    Of inward light, the spirit's excellence
    Made visible to sense.

Athlete be you; strong runner to the goal,
    Glad though the game be lost or won:
Fleet limbs that chronicle a fleeter soul,
    In every winter valiantly to run,
    Till the last race be done.

Love wisdom that is suited in a rhyme,
    And be in all your learning known
Old minstrels chanting out of faded time,
    Since he who counts all years gone by alone
    Makes any year his own.

And when one day you are a lover too,
    Come back to her who bore you, dear,
Tell out your tale; you shall the better woo
    For every word that from her lips you hear,
    For she made love most clear.

Most clear for him who sits beside you now;
    There was a certain frost that fell
Before its time upon a summer bough,,
    And how at last that reckoning was well,
    She for your love shall tell.

Labour to build your house, but ever keep
    That greater garden fresh in mind,
That England with its bird-song buried deep
    In cool great woods where chivalry can find
    The province of its kind.

Be great or little your inheritance,
    Know there shall number in that dower
No treasure from the treasuries of chance
    So rare as that you came the perfect flower
    Of love's most perfect hour.

Go now, my son. Be all I might have been.
    (Ask her. She knows, and none but she.)
Her beauty and her wisdom weathered clean
    Some part of me in you, that you might be
    Her own eternity.

John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater was an influential English poet and dramatist who played a significant role in the early 20th-century literary scene. His best-known works include a series of historical plays about Abraham Lincoln, while his poetry often explored themes of nature and human emotion. Drinkwater was also a prominent figure in the Georgian poetry movement, helping to shape modern English poetry. He contributed to various literary journals and was associated with the Dymock poets.

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