Poems (Kennedy)/Heredity

by Sara Beaumont Kennedy

HEREDITY

I WILL live my life as it has been planned,
 No good comes ever of idle fret;
I will look each day in the face, clear-eyed,
 With silent lips and a cheek unwet.

I will eat of the Dead Sea fruit of grief
 And give no sign of its bitter tang;
I will tread, blind-fold, the hot plough-shares,
 Hearing the song that the martyrs sang.

I will drink, athirst and whelmed with woe,
 The brine of tears naught could appease—
Yea, undismayed I will drain the draught
 And break the cup at the bitter lees.

I will bear my cross up Calvary's mount
 Where Sorrow sits with barbs and scars,
But the summit gained, I will lift mine eyes
 Beyond the cross to the steadfast stars.

And this I will do through a pride of race,
 For clean red blood with its instincts high;
Who whimpers and grovels 'neath whips of fate
 Shames the heritage proud of ancestry.

For the crucial test of a man is pain
 Of body or soul, which e'er it be;
The coward's brood quails, but he who is sired
 Of faith and courage fights valiantly.