Are talking in a room, say certain things,
We were not there! We two are with each other
Somewhere, and fifty years from now, we two
Will look to after souls who were not there
Like figures in a crystal globe; I mean
To lift to light the wounds of brooding love,
And show you that the world contains events
Of which we live in ignorance, if we know
They hurt us with their mystery, coming near
In our soul's cycle, somehow. But the dead,
And what they lived, what are they?--what the things
Of our dead selves to selves who are alive,
And live the hour that's given us?"
"What's your past
To me, beloved, if your soul and body
Are mine to-day, not only mine, but made
By living more my own, more rich for me,
More truly harmonized with me? Believe me
You are my highest hope made real at last,
The climax of my love life, I accept
Whatever passed in rooms in years gone by;
Whatever contacts, raptures, pains or hopes
As schooling of your soul to make it precious,
And for my worship, my advancement, kneel
And thank the God of mysteries and wisdom
Who made you for me, let me find you, love you!"
"Now of myself a word. In years to come
These words I write will seem all truth to you,
Their prism colors, violet and red,
Will fade away and leave them in the light
Arranged and reasonable and wholly true.
Then you will read the words: I found you, dear,
After a life of pain; and you will see
My spirit like a blossom that you watch
From budding to unfolding, knowing thus
How it matured from day to day. I say
My life has been all pain, I see at first
A father and a mother linked in strife.
Am thrown upon my girlhood's strength to teach,
Earn money for my schooling, would know French;
I studied Greek a little, gave it up,
Distractions, duties, came too fast for me.
I longed to sing, took lessons, lack of money
Ended the lessons. But above it all
My heart was like an altar lit with flame,
Aspired to heaven, asked for sacrifice,
For incense to be bright, more beautiful
For beauty's sake. And in my soul's despair,
And just to use this vital flame, I turned
To God, the church. You must be stone to hear
Such words as these and not relent, an image
Of basalt which I pray to not to see
And not to hear! But listen! look at me,
Did I become a drifter, wholly fail?
Did I become a common woman, turn
To common life and ways? Can you dispute
My eyes were fixed upon a lovelier life,
Have never gaze withdrawn from loveliness?
Did I give up, or break, turn to the flesh,
Pleasures, the solace of the senses--No!
Where some take drink to ease their hurts and dull
Their disappointments, I renewed my will
To sacrifice and service, work, who saw
These things in essence may be drink as well,
And bring the end, oblivion while you live,
But bring supremacy instead of failure,
Collapse, disgust and fears. Think what you will
Of me for Gregory Wenner, and imagine
The worst you may, I stand here as I am,
With my life proven! And to end the pain
I went to nurse the soldiers in the war
With thoughts that if I died in service, good!
Not that I gladly give up life, I love it.
But life must be surrendered; let it be
In service, as some end it up in drink,
Or opium or lust. Beloved heart,
I know my will is stronger than my vision,
That passion masters judgment; that my love
For love and life and beauty are too much
For gifts like mine; I know that I am dumb,
Songless, without articulate words--but still
My very dumbness is a kind of speech
Which some day will flood down your deafened rocks,
And sweep my meaning over you."
"Well, now
Why did I turn to Gregory from you?
I did not love you or I had not done it.
You did not love me or I had not done it.
I loved him once, he had been good to me.
He was an old familiar friend and touch....
Farewell, if it must be, but save me grief,
The greatest agony: Be brave and strong,
Be all that God requires your soul to be,
O, give me not this cup of poison--this:
That I have been your cause of bitterness;
Have stopped your growth and introverted you,
Given you eyes that see but lies and lust
In human nature, evil in the world--
Eyes that God meant to see the good and strive
For goodness. If I drove you from the war,
Made you distrust its purpose and its faith,
Triumphant over selfishness and wrong,
Oh, leave me with the hope that peace will come,
And vision once again to bless your life.
Behold me as America, taught but half,
Wayward and thoughtless, fighting for a chance;
Denied its ordered youth, thrown into life
But half prepared, so seeking to emerge
Out of a tangled blood, and out of the earth
A creature of the earth that strives to win
A soul, a voice. Behold me thus--forgive!
Take from my life the beauty that you found,
Nothing can kill that beauty if you press
Its blossom to your heart, and with it rise
To nobleness, to duty, give your life
To our America."
"The Lord bless you,
And make his face to shine upon you, and
Be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance
Upon you, give you peace, both now and ever
More. Amen!"
* * * * *
So Elenor's letters ended
The evidence. The afternoon was spent.
The inquest was adjourned till ten o'clock
Next morning. They arose and left the room....
And Merival half-ill went home. Next day
He lounged with books and had the doctor in,
And read his mail, more letters, articles
About the inquest, Elenor. And from France
A little package came. And here at last
Is Elenor Murray's diary! Merival turns
And finds the entries true to Barrett Bays;
Some word, a letter too from France which says:
The sender learned the name by tracing out
A number in the diary, heard the news
Of Elenor Murray from the paper at home
In Illinois. And of the diary this:
He got it from a poilu who was struck
By this same diary on the cheek. A slap
That stung him, since the diary had been thrown
By Elenor Murray from the second story.
This poilu, being tipsy, raved and thought
Some challenger had struck him. Roaring so
He's taken in. Some weeks elapse, he meets
Our soldiers from the States, and shows the diary,
And tells the story, has the diary read
By this American, gives up the diary
For certain drinks. And this American
Has sent it to the coroner.
A letter
To Merival from an old maiden aunt,
Who's given her life to teaching, pensioned now
And visiting at Madison, Wisconsin.
Aunt Cynthia writes to Merival and says:
"I know you are fatigued, a little tired
With troubles of the lower plane of life.
Quit thinking of the war and Elenor Murray.
Each soul should use its own divinity
By mastering nature outward and within.
Do this by work or worship, Soul's control,
Philosophy, by one or more or all.
Above them all be free. This is religion,
And all of it. Books, temples, dogmas, rituals
Or forms are details only. By these means
Find God within you, prove that you and God
Are one, not several, justify the ways
Of God to man, to speak the western way.
I wish you could be here while I am here
With Arielle, she is a soul, a woman.
You need a woman in your life, my dear--
I met her in Calcutta five years since,
She and her husband toured the world--and now
She is a widow these two years. I started
Arielle in the wisdom of the East.
That avid mind of hers devours all things.
She is an adept, but she thinks her sense
Of fun and human nature as the source
Of laughter and of tears keep her from being
A mystic, though she uses Hindu thought
And practice for her soul."
"I'd like to send
Some pictures of her, if she'd let me do it:
Arielle with her dogs upon the lawn,
Her arms about their necks. Or Arielle
About her flowers. I've another one,
Arielle on her favorite horse: another,
Arielle by her window, hand extended,
The very soul of rhythm; and another,
Arielle laughing like a rising sun,
No one can laugh as she does. For you see
Her outward soul is love, her inward soul
Is wisdom and that makes her what she is:
A Robin Goodfellow, a Puck, a girl,
A prankish wit, a spirit of bright tears,
A queenly woman, clothed in majesty,
A rapture and a solace, comrade, friend,
A lover of old women such as I;
A mother to young children, for she keeps
A brood of orphans in her little town.
She is a will as disciplined as steel,
Has suffered and grown wise. Her tenderness
Is hidden under words so brief and pure
You cannot sense the tenderness in all
Until you read them over many times.
She is a lady bountiful, who gives
As prodigally as nature, and she asks
No gifts from you, but gets them anyway,
Because all spirits pour themselves to her.
If I were taking for America
A symbol, it would be my Arielle
And not your Elenor Murray."
"Here's her life!
Her father died when she was just a child,
Leaving a modest fortune to a widow,
Arielle's mother, also other children.
After a time the mother went to England
And settled down in Sussex. There the mother
Was married to a scoundrel, mad-man, genius,
Who tyrannized the household, whipped the children.
So Arielle at fourteen ran away.
She pined for her Wisconsin and America.
She went to Madison, or near the place,
And taught school in the country, much the same
As Elenor Murray did.
"Now here is something:
Behold our world, humanity, the groups
Of people into states, communities,
Full up of powers and virtues, aid and light--
Friends, helpers, understanders of the soul.
It may be just the status of enlightment,
But I think there are brothers of the light,
And powers around us; for if Elenor Murray
Half-fails, is broken, here is Arielle
Who with the surer instinct finds the springs
Of health and life. And so, I say, if I
Had daughters, and were dying, leaving them,
I should not fear; for I should know the world
Would care for them and give them everything
They had the strength to take."
"Here's Arielle.
She teaches school and studies--O that wag--
She posts herself in Shakespeare, forms a class
Of women thrice her age and teaches them,
Adds that way to her earnings. Just in time--
Such things are always opportune, a man
Comes by and sees her spirit, says to her
You may read Plato, and she reads and passes
To Kant and Schopenhauer. So it goes
Until by twenty all her brain is seething
With knowledge and with dreams. She is beloved
By all the people of the country-side,
Besought and honored--yet she keeps to self,
Has hardly means enough, since now she sends
Some help to mother who has been despoiled,
Abandoned by the mad-man."
"Then one spring
A paper in Milwaukee gives a prize,
A trip to Europe, to the one who gets
The most subscriptions in a given time--
And Arielle who has so many friends--
Achievement brings achievement, friends bring friends--
Finds rallying support and wins the prize.
Is off to Europe where she meets the man
She married when returned."
"He is a youth
Of beauty and of promise, yet a soul
Who riots in the sunlight, honey of life.
And gets his wings gummed in the poisonous sweet.
And Arielle one morning wakes to find
A horror on her hands: her husband's found
Dead in a house of ill-fame. She is calm
Out of that rhythm, sense of beauty which
Makes her a power, all her deeds a song.
She lays the body under the dancing muses
There in the wondrous library and flings
A purple robe across it, kneels and lays
Her sunny head against it, says a prayer.
She had been constant, loyal even to dreams,
To this wild youth, whose errant ways she knew.
Now don't you see the contrast? I refrain
From judging Elenor Murray, but I say
One thing is beautiful and one is not.
And Arielle is beautiful as a spirit,
And Elenor is somewhat beautiful,
But streaked and mottled, too. Say what you will
Of freedom, nature, body's rights, no less
Honor and constancy are beautiful,
And truth most beautiful. And Arielle
Could kneel beside the body of her dead,
Who had neglected her so constantly,
And say a prayer of thankfulness that she
Had honored him throughout those seven years
Of married life--she prayed so--why, she says
That prayer was worth a thousand stolen raptures
Offered her in the years of life between."
"Now here she was at thirty
Left to a mansion there in Madison.
Her husband lived there; it was life, you know,
For her to meet one of her neighborhood
In Europe, though a stranger until then.
And here is Arielle in her mansion, priestess
Amid her treasures, beauties, for this man
Has left her many thousands, and she lives
Among her books and flowers, rides and walks,
And frolics with her dogs, and entertains."...
And as the Coroner folded the letter out
A letter from this Arielle fell, which read:
"We have an aunt in common, Cynthia.
I know her better than you do, I think,
And love her better too. You men go off
With wandering and business, leave these aunts,
And precious kindred to be found by souls
Who are more kindred, maybe. I have heard
Most everything about you, of your youth
Your schooling, shall I say your sorrow too?
Admire your life, have studied Elenor,
As I have had the chance or got the word.
And what your aunt writes in advice I like,
Approve of and commend to you. You see
I leap right over social rules to write,
And speak my mind. So many friends I've made
By searching out and asking. Why delay?
Time slips away like moving clouds, but Life
Says to the wise make haste. Is there a soul
You'd like to know? Then signal it. I light
From every peak a beacon fire, my peaks
Are new found heights of vision, reaching them
I either see a beacon light, or flash
A beacon light. And thus it was I found
Your Cynthia and mine, and now I write.
I have a book to send you, show that way
How much I value your good citizenship,
Your work as coroner. I had the thought
Of coroners as something like horse doctors--
Your aunt says you're as polished as a surgeon.
When I was ripe for Shakespeare some one brought
His books to me; when I was ripe for Kant,
I found him through a friend. I know about you,
I sense you too, and I believe you need
The spiritual uplifting of the Gita.
You haven't read it, have you? No! you haven't.
I wish that Elenor Murray might have read it.
I grieve about that girl, you can't imagine
How much I grieve. Nov write me, coroner,
What is your final judgment of the girl."
"I have so many friends who love me, always
New friends come by to give me wisdom--you
Can teach me, I believe, a man like you
So versed in life. You must have learned new things
Exploring in the life of Elenor Murray.
I was about to write you several times.
I loved that girl from all I heard of her.
She must have had some faculty or fault
That thwarted her, and left her, so to speak,
Just looking into promised lands, but never
Possessing or enjoying them--poor girl!
And here she flung her spirit in the war
And wrecked herself--it makes me sorrowful.
I went to Europe through a prize I won,
And saw the notable places--but this girl
Who hungered just as much as I, saw nothing
Or little, gave her time to labor, nursing--
It is most pitiful, if you'll believe me
I've wept about your Eleanor. Write me now
What is your final judgment of the girl?"...
So Merival read these letters, fell asleep.
Next day was weaker, had a fever too,
And took to bed at last. He had to fight
Six weeks or more for life. When he was up
And strong enough he called the jury in
And at his house they talked the case and supped.
THE JURY DELIBERATES
The jurymen are seated here and there
In Merival's great library. They smoke,
And drink a little beer or Scotch. Arise
At times to read the evidence taken down,
And typed for reference. Before them lie
Elenor Murray's letters, all the letters
Written to Merival--there's Alma Bell's,
And Miriam Fay's, letters anonymous.
The article of Roberts in the _Dawn_,
That one of Demos, Hogos; a daily file
Of Lowell's _Times_--Lowell has festered now
Some weeks, a felon-finger in a stall.
And where is Barrett Bays? In Kankakee
Where Elenor Murray's ancestor was kept.
The strain and shame had broken him; a fear
Fell on him of a consequence when the coroner
Still kept him with a deputy. He grew wild,
Attacked the deputy, began to wander
And show some several selves. A multiple
Spirit of devils had him. Dr. Burke
Went over him and found him mad.
And now
The jury meet amid a rapid shift
Of changes, mist and cloud. The man is sick
Who administers the country. Has come back
To laud the pact of peace; his auditors
Turn silently away, whole states assemble
To hear and turn away, sometimes to heckle.
And if a mattoid emperor caused the war,
And Elenor Murrays put the emperor down,
The emperor, could he laugh at all, can laugh
To see a country, bent to spend its last
Dollar, its blood to the last drop, having spent
Enough of these, go mad as Barrett Bays.
And like a headless man, seen in a dream,
Go capering in an ecstasy of doubt,
Regret and disillusion. He can laugh
To see the pact, which took the great estate,
Once his and God's, and wrapt it as with snakes
That stung and sucked, rejected in the land
That sent these Elenor Murrays to make free
The world from despotism. See that very land
Crop despotisms--so the jury sees
Convened to end the case of Elenor Murray....
And Rev. Maiworm, juryman, gives his thought
To conquest of the world for Christ, and says
The churches must unite to free the world
From war and sin. Result? Why less and less
Homes like the Murray home, where husband, wife,
Live in dissension. More and more of schools
For Elenor Murrays. Happy marriages
Will be the rule, our Elenors will find
Good husbands, quiet hearths, a competence.
And Isaac Newfeldt said: "You talk pish-posh.
You go about at snipping withered leaves,
And picking blasted petals--take the root,
Get at the soil--you cannot end these wars
Until you solve the feeding problem. Quit
Relying on your magic to make bread
With five loaves broken, raise a bigger crop
Of wheat, and get it to the mouths of men.
And as for sin--what is it?--All of sin
Lies in the customs, comes from how you view
The bread and butter matter; all your gods
And sons of God are guardians of the status
Of business and of money; sin a thing
Which contradicts, or threatens banks and wharves.
And as for that your churches now control
As much as human nature can digest
A dominance like that. And what's the state
Of things in Christendom? Why, wars, and want
And many Elenor Murrays. Tyrannies
Are like as pea and pea; you shall not drink,
Or read, or talk, or trade, are from one pod.
What would I do? Why, socialize the world,
Then leave men free to live or die, let nature
Go decimating as she will, and weed
The worthless with disease or alcohol--
You won't see much of that, however, if
You socialize the world."
And David Barrow
Spoke up and said: "No ism is enough.
The question is, Is life worth living, good
Or bad? If bad, I think that Elenor Murray had
As good a life as any. Here we've sat
These weeks and heard these stories--nothing new;
And as to waste, our time is wasted here,
If there were better things to do; and yet
Perhaps there is no better. I've enjoyed
This work, association. Well, you're told
To judge not, and that means to judge not man;
You are not told to judge not God. And so
I judge Him. And again your Elenor Murrays,
Your human being cannot will his way,
But God's omnipotent, and where He fails
He should be censured. Why does He allow
A world like this, and suffer earthquakes, storms,
The sinking of _Titanics_, cancers? Why
Suffer these wars, this war?--Talk of the riffles
That flowed from Elenor Murray--here's a wave
Of tidal power, stirred by a greedy coot
Who called himself an emperor! And look
Our land, America, is ruined, slopped
For good, or for our lives with filth and stench;
So that to live here takes what strength you have,
None left for living, as a man should live.
And this America once free and fair
Is now the hatefulest, commonest group of men,
Women and children in the Occident.
What's life here now? Why, boredom, nothing else....
Why pity Elenor Murray? Gottlieb Gerald
Told of her home life; it was good enough,
Average American, or better. Schools
She had in plenty, what would she have done
With courses to the end in music, art?
She was not happy. Elenor had a brain,
And brains and happiness are at enmity.
And if the world goes on some thousand years,
The race as much advanced beyond us now
In feeling, thought, as we are now beyond
Pinthecanthropus, say, why, all will see
What I see now;--'twere better if the race
Had never risen. All analogies
Of nature show that death of man is death.
He plants his seed and dies, the resurrection
Is not the man, but is the child that grows
From sperm he sows. The grain of wheat that sprouts
Is not the stalk that bore it. Now suppose
We get the secret in a thousand years,
Can prove that death's the end, analogies
Put by with amber, frogs' legs--tell me then
What opiate will still the shrieks of men?
But some of us know now, and I am one.
There is no heaven for me; and as for those
Who make a heaven to get out of this--
You gentlemen who call life good, the world
The work of God's perfection; yet invent
A heaven to rest in from this world of woe--
You do not wish to go there; and resort
To cures and Christian Science to stay here!
Which shows you are not sure. And thus we have
Your Christian saying at heart that life is bad,
And heaven is good, but not so good and sure
That you will hurry to it. Why, I'll prove
The Christian pessimist, as well as I.
He says life is so bad it has no meaning,
Unless there be a future; and I say
Life's bad, and if no future, then is worse.
And as it has no future, is a hell.
This girl was soaked in opiates to the last.
Religion, love for Barrett Bays, believed
That God is love. Love is a word to me
That has no meaning but in terms of man.
And if a man cause war, or suffer war,
When he could stop it, do we say he loves?
Why call God love who can prevent a war?
To chasten us, to better, purge our sins?
Well, if it be then we are bettered, purged
When William Hohenzollern goes to war
And makes the whole world crazy."
"Understand
I do not mock, I pity man and life.
No man has sat here who has suffered more,
Seeing the life of Elenor Murray, through
Her life beholding life, our country's life.
I pity man and life. I curse the scheme
Which wakes the senseless clay to lips that bleed,
And eyes that weep, and hearts that agonize,
Then in an instant make them clay again!
And for it all no reason, that the reason
Can bring to light to stand the light."
"And yet
I'd make life better, food and shelter better
And wider happiness, and fuller love.
We're travelers on a ship that has no bourne
But rocks, for us. On such a ship 'twere wise
To have the daily comforts, foolish course
To neither eat, nor sleep, keep warm, nor sing.
But only walk the rainy deck and wait.
The little opiates of happiness
Would make the sailing better, though we know
The trip is nowhere and the rocks will sink
The portless steamer."