Your genealogy may be
The finest thing on earth
Or merely a decadent tree
Of past descent and worth.
The children of the Puritans
Should have the Pilgrims’ souls
Or else an alien wire spans
Your insulated poles.
An aristocracy of breed
Is that which keeps the stamp
Of spirit from heroic deed
In patriot hall or camp.
The veins whose life-blood flows for home
Or right or liberty
Should be the same from which they come,
To keep the nation free.
To find in our ancestral line
A sire of noble blood
Puts on us truth to make the sign
Of our escutcheon good.
Colonial forbears condemn
Like ghosts from hollow boles
Unless we reincarnate them
Without their shrouds and stoles.
To be well-born a century back,
A century of fruit,
A century the soil to pack
About the ancient root,
Is such a heritage we well
May trace it to its source
For all from which its scions swell,
Its vital ichors course.