Heredity

I am the family face;

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Projecting trait and trace

Through time to times anon,

And leaping from place to place

Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can

In curve and voice and eye

Despise the human span

Of durance--that is I;

The eternal thing in man,

That heeds no call to die.

Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928)