DOMESDAY BOOK
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ake any life you choose and study it:It gladdens, troubles, changes many lives.The life goes out, how many things result?Fate drops a stone, and to the utmost shoresThe circles spread. Now, such a book were endless,If every circle, riffle should be tracedOf any life--and so of Elenor Murray,Whose life was humble and whose death was tragic.And yet behold the riffles spread, the livesThat are affected, and the secrets gainedOf lives she never knew of, as for that.For even the world could not contain the booksThat should be written, if all deeds were traced,Effects, results, gains, losses, of her life,And of her death. Concretely said, in brief,A man and woman have produced this child;What was the child's pre-natal circumstance?How did her birth affect the father, mother?What did their friends, old women, relativesTake from the child in feeling, joy or pain?What of her childhood friends, her days at school,Her teachers, girlhood sweethearts, lovers later,When she became a woman? What of these?And what of those who got effects becauseThey knew this Elenor Murray? Then she dies.Read how the human secrets are exposedIn many lives because she died--not allLives, by her death affected, written here.The reader may trace out such other rifflesAs come to him--this book must have an end. Enough is shown to show what could be toldIf we should write a world of books. In briefOne feature of the plot elaboratesThe closeness of one life, however humbleWith every life upon this globe. In truthI sit here in Chicago, housed and fed,And think the world secure, at peace, the clockJust striking three, in Europe striking eight:And in some province, in some palace, hut,Some words are spoken, or a fisticuffResults between two brawlers, and for thatA blue-eyed boy, my grandson, we may say,Not even yet in seed, but to be bornA half a century hence, is by those words,That fisticuff, drawn into war in Europe,Shrieks from a bullet through the groin, and liesUnder the sod of France. But to returnTo Elenor Murray, I have made a bookCalled Domesday Book, a census spiritualTaken of our America, or in partTaken, not wholly taken, it may be.For William Merival, the coroner,Who probed the death of Elenor Murray goesAs far as may be, and beyond his power,In diagnosis of America,While finding out the cause of death. In shortBecomes a William the Conqueror that wayIn making up a Domesday Book for us....Of this a little later. But beforeWe touch upon the Domesday book of old,We take up Elenor Murray, show her birth;Then skip all time between and show her death;Then take up Coroner Merival--who was he?Then trace the life of Elenor Murray throughThe witnesses at the inquest on the bodyOf Elenor Murray;--also letters written,And essays written, conversations heard,But all evoked by Elenor Murray's death.And by the way trace riffles here and there....A word now on the Domesday book of old:Remember not a book of doom, but a bookOf houses; domus, house, so domus book.And this book of the death of Elenor MurrayIs not a book of doom, though showing tooHow fate was woven round her, and the soulsThat touched her soul; but is a house book tooOf riches, poverty, and weakness, strengthOf this our country. If you take St. LukeYou find an angel came to Mary, said:Hail! thou art highly favored, shalt conceive,Bring forth a son, a king for David's throne:--So tracing life before the life was born.We do the same for Elenor Murray, thoughNo man or angel said to Elenor's mother:You have found favor, you are blessed of God,You shall conceive, bring forth a daughter blest,And blessing you. Quite otherwise the case,As being blest or blessing, something likePerhaps, in that desire, or flame of life,Which gifts new souls with passion, strength and love....This is the manner of the girl's conception,And of her birth:--...
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