Where did it come from, this pale skin,
This tall quixotic gallant strain
Among my moody Chinese kin,
This that I mixed my seed with, and my grain?
I see them riding side by side,
My son with his long back and hand,
My niece, white-freckled, dignified,
With the same fine desperate self-command.
All beauties now seem faint beside
Those essences of personhood
That float apart or coincide
According to the genes' vicissitude.
Their silence and their sudden smile,
Their brown eyes and their length of bone,
Their calmness with the animal,
Their singleness, as one who walks alone,
Denote the puer still intact,
Puella candid as the flower,
That through the mixing and the act
Preserve the soul's perfection and its power.
This tall quixotic gallant strain
Among my moody Chinese kin,
This that I mixed my seed with, and my grain?
I see them riding side by side,
My son with his long back and hand,
My niece, white-freckled, dignified,
With the same fine desperate self-command.
All beauties now seem faint beside
Those essences of personhood
That float apart or coincide
According to the genes' vicissitude.
Their silence and their sudden smile,
Their brown eyes and their length of bone,
Their calmness with the animal,
Their singleness, as one who walks alone,
Denote the puer still intact,
Puella candid as the flower,
That through the mixing and the act
Preserve the soul's perfection and its power.
