Inheritance

Lo, what am I? A patch of things,
Mere odds and 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 fate,
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 ?

This motley from the Past flung down,
This work with no artificer,
This prince, this poet, and this clown,
Deific and a driveler;
This bequeathed brain which shall conceive
What things this borrowed frame shall do,
This will to serve and will to leave
The outworn old, the untried new,
This quick made up of all the dead,
And this deep heart inherited, —
I call these mine, and I will be
King, emperor, tsar, and Deity !
* The tenement may like me ill,
The garment ill befitting be:
I will inhabit kingly still,
And wear my rags right regally.
These hands shall work my will, — not hers
Who fashioned them to other use;
These feet fare not as he prefers
Who shaped them, but as I shall choose ;
Mine be the words these lips shall frame •,
And through my great-grandmother’s eyes
I front my world, not hers, and claim
Under no dead soul’s sovereignties.
Ay, borrowed husk, head, heart, and hand,
Slave on and serve me till we die !
I am your Lord and your Command!
But only God knows — what am I.