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PSYCHOGENESIS, by                    
First Line: When the hand of fate shook the family tree
Last Line: "for they tell me ""I'm captain of my soul."
Subject(s): Ancestry & Ancestors


When the hand of Fate shook the family tree,
A little too much fell on me.
For the facts that came in that awful fall
Reveal me not myself at all.
I cannot say that I'm reconciled
For I'm not, all told, my mother's child.
I have father's walk and laugh like him.
But I run, they say, like Uncle Jim.
My grandmother says, and she seems to know,
I smile and wink like her cousin Joe,
That I carve my meat like her Uncle Sam.
Tell me, someone, who I am.
Shade of my fathers, shadow or ghost,
If I become great I must not boast.
On the other hand, if I go wrong,
To whom, oh please, does the sin belong?
Virtues and vices, cut, dried on the shelf.
And I wanted so much to be myself.
Aside from all this, the rule is set
That "I am a part of all I have met."
Nature and nurture, behavior acquired,
They have all tuned in, I am duly wired.
But something within me says I am free,
As I run from the shade of that ancestral tree.
So I'll answer "Here" to Gabriel's roll
For they tell me "I'm captain of my soul."





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