Said darling daughter unto me: <br />"oh Dad, how funny it would be <br />If you had gone to Mexico <br />A score or so of years ago. <br />Had not some whimsey changed your plan <br />I might have been a Mexican. <br />With lissome form and raven hair, <br />Instead of being fat and fair. <br /> <br />"Or if you'd sailed the Southern Seas <br />And mated with a Japanese <br />I might have been a squatty girl <br />With never golden locks to curl, <br />Who flirted with a painted fan, <br />And tinkled on a samisan, <br />And maybe slept upon a mat - <br />I'm very glad I don't do that. <br /> <br />"When I consider the romance <br />Of all your youth of change and chance <br />I might, I fancy, just as well <br />Have bloomed a bold Tahitian belle, <br />Or have been born . . . but there - ah no! <br />I draw the line - and Esquimeaux. <br />It scares me stiff to think of what <br />I might have been - thank God! I'm not." <br /> <br />Said I: "my dear, don't be absurd, <br />Since everything that has occurred, <br />Through seeming fickle in your eyes, <br />Could not a jot be otherwise. <br />For in this casual cosmic biz <br />The world can be but what it is; <br />And nobody can dare deny <br />Part of this world is you and I. <br /> <br />Or call it fate or destiny <br />No other issue could there be. <br />Though half the world I've wandered through <br />Cause and effect have linked us two. <br />Aye, all the aeons of the past <br />Conspired to bring us here at last, <br />And all I ever chanced to do <br />Inevitably led to you. <br /> <br />To you, to make you what you are, <br />A maiden in a Morris car, <br />IN Harris tweeds, an airedale too, <br />But Anglo-Saxon through and through. <br />And all the good and ill I've done <br />In every land beneath the sun <br />Magnificently led to this - <br />A country cottage and - your kiss."<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/causation/
