The Pedigree Thomas Hardy

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.