INHERITANCE 181 



INHERITANCE 



Lo! what am I? A patch of things, 

 Mere odds aud ends of lives flung by 

 From age-long, rag-bag gatherings, 

 Pieced up by Fate full thriftily: 

 Somebody's worn-out will and wit, 

 Somebody's habits and his hair, 

 Discarded conscience, faith once fair 

 Ere Time, the moth, had eaten it; 

 My great-grandfather's chin and nose, 

 The eyes my great- grandmother wore, 

 And hands from some remote who knows? 

 Perchance prehensile ancestor; 

 Somebody's style, somebody's gait, 

 Another body's wrist and waist, 

 With this one's temper, that one's trait, 

 One's tastes, another's lack of taste; 

 Feelings I never chose to feel, 

 A voice in which I had no voice, 

 Revealing where I would conceal 

 Rude impulses without a choice; 

 Faults which this forefather or that 

 Unkindly fostered to my ill, 

 With others some one else begat 

 And made the matter worser still. 

 They chose, these masters of my fato. 

 To please themselves, bequeathing me 

 Base pleasure in the things I hate, 

 Liking for what misliketh me. 

 Out of the ashes of their fires, 

 Out of the fashion of their bone, 

 They fashioned me, my mighty sires, 

 And shall I call my soul my own? 



