Thomas Hardy — The Pedigree

I         I bent in the deep of night      Over a pedigree the chronicler gave      As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed, The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light         Of the moon in its old age: And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed   Like a drifting dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave. II         So, scanning my sire-sown tree,     And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that,         With offspring mapped below in lineage,         Till the tangles troubled me, The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face   Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage     Enchanting me to gaze again thereat. III         It was a mirror now,     And in it a long perspective I could trace      Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each         All with the kindred look,     Whose names had since been inked down in their place         On the recorder's book, Generation and generation of my mien, and build, and brow. IV         And then did I divine     That every heave and coil and move I made     Within my brain, and in my mood and speech,         Was in the glass portrayed     As long forestalled by their so making it;     The first of them, the primest fuglemen of my line, Being fogged in far antiqueness past surmise and reason's reach. V         Said I then, sunk in tone,     "I am merest mimicker and counterfeit! -         Though thinking, I AM I     AND WHAT I DO I DO MYSELF ALONE."     —The cynic twist of the page thereat unknit Back to its normal figure, having wrought its purport wry,     The Mage's mirror left the window-square, And the stained moon and drift retook their places there. 1916.