My Fair-haired boy, my blue-eyed son,

I see you as one lately come

From foreign lands and shores unknown;

And fearfully I look upon

Your face, and wonder what you are –

Native of a distant star.

 

A window to worlds beyond the sky

I see within your shining eye,

And from your infant lips I hear

A word to crush the man of war,

To silence scholar, scribe, and sage

From sun to sun and age to age.

 

My blue-eyed boy, my fair-haired son,

Your cradled head recalls the morn

When Heaven’s bright Sun came down to sleep

Among the oxen and the sheep:

Who grew so wise and kind and good

They nailed Him to a cross of wood.

 

When moon and stars are dimmed with tears,

And the passage of the fading years

Obscures my eye and fogs my head,

I’ll look to you in hope and dread

Lest world and flesh and evil one

Have made a man of you, my son.