It hurts to set you free, but you’ll never follow me.

The line frames a breakup as an act of reluctant mercy: the speaker is pained by letting someone go, yet recognizes that keeping them would be a kind of coercion or self-deception. “You’ll never follow me” suggests an irreconcilable difference in direction—values, temperament, or willingness to share the speaker’s path—so release becomes the only honest choice. The tension between attachment (“it hurts”) and autonomy (“set you free”) gives the sentiment its bite: love does not guarantee alignment, and insisting on loyalty can become a demand for submission. In Morrison’s poetic register, it also hints at the loneliness of the self-styled wanderer or visionary who cannot be accompanied.