Classic Poem

Old Mother Act and her child Fact-of-Act
Lived practically as one,
He so proud of his monomaniac mother,
She so proud of her parthenogenetic son.

After her death he of course
With his looks and education
Lived on the formal compliments
That other phrases paid him;
And had, of his economy, one daughter
Who remarkably resembled
Her paternal and only grandmother.

Indeed, between Act and Matter-of-Fact
Was such consanguineous sympathy
That the disappearance of the matronymic
In the third generation of pure logic
Did not detract from the authority
Of this and later versions
Of the original progenitive argument.

Long flourished that estate
And never died that self-engendering line out.
Scion followed after scion
Until that ancient blood ran nearly thin.
But Verily, In Truth and Beyond Doubt
Renewed the inheritance — and And So On.