Father & Son

There is the family photograph

That is your father’s face,

There is your father’s father

Grey-gathering years apace;

The son, bright-eyed in the morning,

The father, lined and drawn,

The son became the father

On the day that you were born.

 

We’ve all set out on the highway

Our fathers wished us well,

The sons became the fathers

In the same distinctive spell;

The road of all beginnings

Is all there is to lend,

But many a twist, and many a turn

Has marred us at the end.

 

He was my father’s father,

I am my father’s son,

We’ve travelled as far, and farther

Than our father’s years have run;

The twists and turns of fortune

Mean nothing, lost or won,

But the love of a father’s father,

And the love of a father’s son.

 

David Lewis Paget