The Project Gutenberg EBook of Domesday Book, by Edgar Lee Masters This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Domesday Book Author: Edgar Lee Masters Release Date: April 29, 2011 [EBook #35991] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOMESDAY BOOK *** Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) DOMESDAY BOOK SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS SOME PRESS OPINIONS “One of the greatest books of the present century.”—Nation. “The ‘Spoon River Anthology’ has certain qualities essential to greatness—originality of conception and treatment, a daring that would soar to the stars, an instant felicity and facility of expression.”—C. E. Lawrence in The Daily Chronicle. “Mr. Edgar Lee Masters will become a classic ... so close-packed is the book’s pregnant wit, so outspoken its language, so destructive of cant and pharisaism and the veneer of the proprieties, so piercingly true in insight.”—Edward Garnett in The Manchester Guardian. “It is a remarkable book and it grips.”—Daily Telegraph. “This book is of a quality that will endure.... Mr. Masters has been daring with the certainty of success.”—Liverpool Daily Post. “A quite remarkable volume of verse ... quite masterly.”—Sphere. “Its reality, ingenuity, irony, insight, and vision are unique.”—Bookman. DOMESDAY BOOK BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS AUTHOR OF “SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY,” ETC. LONDON EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY LIMITED 1921 Copyright in the U. S. A. By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO MY FATHER HARDIN WALLACE MASTERS SPLENDID INDIVIDUAL OF A PASSING SPECIES—AN AMERICAN CONTENTS PAGE Domesday Book 1 The Birth of Elenor Murray 4 Finding of the Body 9 The Coroner 13 Henry Murray 23 Mrs. Murray 36 Alma Bell to the Coroner 50 Gregory Wenner 59 Mrs. Gregory Wenner 71 Dr. Trace to the Coroner 80 Irma Leese 84 Miriam Fay’s Letter 94 Archibald Lowell 101 Widow Fortelka 110 Rev. Percy Ferguson 118 Dr. Burke 126 Charles Warren, the Sheriff 138 The Governor 152 John Scofield 158 Gottlieb Gerald 163 Lilli Alm 173 Father Whimsett 179 John Campbell and Carl Eaton 188 At Fairbanks 210 Anton Sosnowski 219 Consider Freeland 229 George Joslin on La Menken 237 Will Paget on Demos and Hogos 247 The House that Jack Built 254 Jane Fisher 270 Henry Baker, at New York 277 Loveridge Chase 286 At Nice 289 The Major and Elenor Murray at Nice 305 The Convent 312 Barrett Bays 319 Elenor Murray 356 The Jury Deliberates 377 The Verdict 395 DOMESDAY BOOK DOMESDAY BOOK Take 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 shores The circles spread. Now, such a book were endless, If every circle, riffle should be traced Of any life—and so of Elenor Murray, Whose life was humble and whose death was tragic. And yet behold the riffles spread, the lives That are affected, and the secrets gained Of lives she never knew of, as for that. For even the world could not contain the books That 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, relatives Take 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? [Pg 1] [Pg 2] And what of those who got effects because They knew this Elenor Murray? Then she dies. Read how the human secrets are exposed In many lives because she died—not all Lives, by her death affected, written here. The reader may trace out such other riffles As come to him—this book must have an end. Enough is shown to show what could be told If we should write a world of books. In brief One feature of the plot elaborates The closeness of one life, however humble With every life upon this globe. In truth I sit here in Chicago, housed and fed, And think the world secure, at peace, the clock Just striking three, in Europe striking eight: And in some province, in some palace, hut, Some words are spoken, or a fisticuff Results between two brawlers, and for that A blue-eyed boy, my grandson, we may say, Not even yet in seed, but to be born A half a century hence, is by those words, That fisticuff, drawn into war in Europe, Shrieks from a bullet through the groin, and lies Under the sod of France. But to return To Elenor Murray, I have made a book Called Domesday Book, a census spiritual Taken of our America, or in part Taken, not wholly taken, it may be. For William Merival, the coroner, Who probed the death of Elenor Murray goes As far as may be, and beyond his power, In diagnosis of America, While finding out the cause of death. In short Becomes a William the Conqueror that way In making up a Domesday Book for us.... Of this a little later. But before We 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 through The witnesses at the inquest on the body Of 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 book Of houses; domus, house, so domus book. And this book of the death of Elenor Murray Is not a book of doom, though showing too How fate was woven round her, and the souls That touched her soul; but is a house book too Of riches, poverty, and weakness, strength Of this our country. If you take St. Luke You find an angel came to Mary, said: Hail! thou art highly favored, shalt conceive, Bring forth a son, a king for David’s throne:— [Pg 3] [Pg 4] So tracing life before the life was born. We do the same for Elenor Murray, though No 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 like Perhaps, 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:—... THE BIRTH OF ELENOR MURRAY What are the mortal facts With which we deal? The man is thirty years, Most vital, in a richness physical, Of musical heart and feeling; and the woman Is twenty-eight, a cradle warm and rich For life to grow in. And the time is this: This Henry Murray has a mood of peace, A splendor as of June, has for the time Quelled anarchy within him, come to law, Sees life a thing of beauty, happiness, And fortune glow before him. And the mother, Sunning her feathers in his genial light, Takes longing and has hope. For body’s season The blood of youth leaps in them like a fountain, And splashes musically in the crystal pool Of quiet days and hours. They rise refreshed, Feel all the sun’s strength flow through muscles, nerves; Extract from food no poison, only health; Are sensitive to simple things, the turn Of leaves on trees, flowers springing, robins’ songs. Now such a time must prosper love’s desire, Fed gently, tended wisely, left to mount In flame and light. A prospering fate occurs To send this Henry Murray from his wife, And keep him absent for a month—inspire A daily letter, written of the joys, And hopes they have together, and omit, Forgotten for the time, old aches, despairs, Forebodings for the future. What results? For thirty days her youth, and youthful blood Under the stimulus of absence, letters, And growing longing, laves and soothes and feeds, Like streams that nourish fields, her body’s being. Enriches cells to plumpness, dim, asleep, Which stretch, expand and turn, the prototype Of a baby newly born; which after the cry At midnight, taking breath an hour before,— That cry which is of things most tragical, The tragedy most poignant—sleeps and rests, And flicks its little fingers, with closed eyes [Pg 5] [Pg 6] Senses with visions of unopened leaves This monstrous and external sphere, the world, And what moves in it. So she thinks of him, And longs for his return, and as she longs The rivers of her body run and ripple, Refresh and quicken her. The morning’s light Flutters upon the ceiling, and she lies And stretches drowsily in the breaking slumber Of fluctuant emotion, calls to him With spirit and flesh, until his very name Seems like to form in sound, while lips are closed, And tongue is motionless, beyond herself, And in the middle spaces of the room Calls back to her. And Henry Murray caught, In letters, which she sent him, all she felt, Re-kindled it and sped it back to her. Then came a lover’s fancy in his brain: He would return unlooked for—who, the god, Inspired the fancy?—find her in what mood She might be in his absence, where no blur Of expectation of his coming changed Her color, flame of spirit. And he bought Some chablis and a cake, slipped noiselessly Into the chamber where she lay asleep, And had a light upon her face before She woke and saw him. How she cried her joy! And put her arms around him, burned away In one great moment from a goblet of fire, Which over-flowed, whatever she had felt Of shrinking or distaste, or loveless hands At any time before, and burned it there Till even the ashes sparkled, blew away In incense and in light. She rose and slipped A robe on and her slippers; drew a stand Between them for the chablis and the cake. And drank and ate with him, and showed her teeth, While laughing, shaking curls, and flinging back Her head for rapture, and in little crows. And thus the wine caught up the resting cells, And flung them in the current, and their blood Flows silently and swiftly, running deep; And their two hearts beat like the rhythmic chimes Of little bells of steel made blue by flame, Because their lives are ready now, and life Cries out to life for life to be. The fire, Lit in the altar of their eyes, is blind For mysteries that urge, the blood of them In separate streams would mingle, hurried on By energy from the heights of ancient mountains; The God himself, and Life, the Gift of God. And as result the hurrying microcosms Out of their beings sweep, seek out, embrace, Dance for the rapture of freedom, being loosed; Unite, achieve their destiny, find the cradle Of sleep and growth, take up the cryptic task [Pg 7] [Pg 8] Of maturation and of fashioning; Where no light is except the light of God To light the human spirit, which emerges From nothing that man knows; and where a face, To be a woman’s or a man’s takes form: Hands that shall gladden, lips that shall enthrall With songs or kisses, hands and lips, perhaps, To hurt and poison. All is with the fates, And all beyond us. Now the seed is sown, The flower must grow and blossom. Something comes, Perhaps, to whisper something in the ear That will exert itself against the mass That grows, proliferates; but for the rest The task is done. One thing remains alone: It is a daughter, woman, that you bear, A whisper says to her—It is her wish— Her wish materializes in a voice Which says: the name of Elenor is sweet, Choose that for her—Elenor, which is light, The light of Helen, but a lesser light In this our larger world; a light to shine, And lure amid the tangled woodland ways Of this our life; a firefly beating wings Here, there amid the thickets of hard days. And to go out at last, as all lights do, And leave a memory, perhaps, but leave No meaning to be known of any man.... So Elenor Murray is conceived and born. ———— But now this Elenor Murray being born, We start not with her life, but with her death, The finding of her body by the river. And then as Coroner Merival takes proof Her life comes forth, until the Coroner Traces it to the moment of her death. And thus both life and death of her are known. This the beginning of the mystery:— FINDING OF THE BODY Elenor Murray, daughter of Henry Murray, The druggist at LeRoy, a village near The shadow of Starved Rock, this Elenor But recently returned from France, a heart Who gave her service in the world at war, Was found along the river’s shore, a mile Above Starved Rock, on August 7th, the day Year 1679, LaSalle set sail For Michilmackinac to reach Green Bay In the Griffin, in the winter snow and sleet, Reaching “Lone Cliff,” Starved Rock its later name, Also La Vantum, village of the tribe Called Illini. This may be taken to speak The symbol of her life and fate. For first This Elenor Murray comes into this life, [Pg 9] [Pg 10] And lives her youth where the Rock’s shadow falls, As if to say her life should starve and lie Beneath a shadow, wandering in the world, As Cavalier LaSalle did, born at Rouen, Shot down on Trinity River, Texas. She Searches for life and conquest of herself With the same sleepless spirit of LaSalle; And comes back to the shadow of the Rock, And dies beneath its shadow. Cause of death? Was she like Sieur LaSalle shot down, or choked, Struck, poisoned? Let the coroner decide. Who, hearing of the matter, takes the body And brings it to LeRoy, is taking proofs; Lets doctors cut the body, probe and peer To find the cause of death. And so this morning Of August 7th, as a hunter walks— Looking for rabbits maybe, aimless hunting— Over the meadow where the Illini’s La Vantum stood two hundred years before, Gun over arm in readiness for game, Sees some two hundred paces to the south Bright colors, red and blue; thinks off the bat A human body lies there, hurries on And finds the girl’s dead body, hatless head, The hat some paces off, as if she fell In such way that the hat dashed off. Her arms Lying outstretched, the body half on side, The face upturned to heaven, open eyes That might have seen Starved Rock until the eyes Sank down in darkness where no image comes. This hunter knew the body, bent and looked; Gave forth a gasp of horror, leaned and touched The cold hand of the dead: saw in her pocket, Sticking above the pocket’s edge a banner, And took it forth, saw it was Joan of Arc In helmet and cuirass, kneeling in prayer. And in the banner a paper with these words: “To be brave, and not to flinch.” And standing there This hunter knew that Elenor Murray came Some days before from France, was visiting An aunt, named Irma Leese beyond LeRoy. What was she doing by the river’s shore? He saw no mark upon her, and no blood; No pistol by her, nothing disarranged Of hair or clothing, showing struggle—nothing To indicate the death she met. Who saw her Before or when she died? How long had death Been on her eyes? Some hours, or over-night. The hunter touched her hand, already stiff; And saw the dew upon her hair and brow, And a blue deadness in her eyes, like pebbles. The lips were black, and bottle flies had come To feed upon her tongue. ’Tis ten o’clock, The coolness of the August night unchanged By this spent sun of August. And the moon Lies dead and wasted there beyond Starved Rock. The moon was beautiful last night! To walk Beside the river under the August moon Took Elenor Murray’s fancy, as he thinks. Then thinking of the aunt of Elenor Murray, Who should be notified, the hunter runs [Pg 11] [Pg 12] To tell the aunt—but there’s the coroner— Is there not law the coroner should know? Should not the body lie, as it was found, Until the coroner takes charge of it? Should not he stand on guard? And so he runs, And from a farmer’s house by telephone Sends word to Coroner Merival. Then returns And guards the body. Here is riffle first: The coroner sat with his traveling bags, Was closing up his desk, had planned a trip With boon companions, they were with him there; The auto waited at the door to take them To catch the train for northern Michigan. He closed the desk and they arose to go. Just then the telephone began to ring, The hunter at the other end was talking, And told of Elenor Murray. Merival Turned to his friends and said: “The jig is up. Here is an inquest, and of moment too. I cannot go, but you jump in the car, And go—you’ll catch the train if you speed up.” They begged him to permit his deputy To hold the inquest. Merival said “no,” And waived them off. They left. He got a car And hurried to the place where Eleanor lay.... Now who was Merival the Coroner? For we shall know of Elenor through him, And know her better, knowing Merival. THE CORONER Merival, of a mother fair and good, A father sound in body and in mind, Rich through three thousand acres left to him By that same father dying, mother dead These many years, a bachelor, lived alone In the rambling house his father built of stone Cut from the quarry near at hand, above The river’s bend, before it meets the island Where Starved Rock rises. Here he had returned, After his Harvard days, took up the task Of these three thousand acres, while his father Aging, relaxed his hand. From farm to farm Rode daily, kept the books, bred cattle, sheep, Raised seed corn, tried the secrets of DeVries, And Burbank in plant breeding. Day by day, His duties ended, he sat at a window In a great room of books where lofty shelves Were packed with cracking covers; newer books Flowed over on the tables, round the globes And statuettes of bronze. Upon the wall The portraits hung of father and of mother, And two moose heads above the mantel stared, [Pg 13] [Pg 14] The trophies of a hunt in youth. So Merival At a bay window sat in the great room, Felt and beheld the stream of life and thought Flow round and through him, to a sound in key With his own consciousness, the murmurous voice Of his own soul. Along a lawn that sloped Some hundred feet to the river he would muse. Or through the oaks and elms and silver birches Between the plots of flowers and rows of box Look at the distant scene of hilly woodlands. And why no woman in his life, no face Smiling from out the summer house of roses, Such riotous flames against the distant green? And why no sons and daughters, strong and fair, To use these horses, ponies, tramp the fields, Shout from the tennis court, swim, skate and row? He asked himself the question many times, And gave himself the answer. It was this: At twenty-five a woman crossed his path— Let’s have the story as the world believes it, Then have the truth. She was betrothed to him, But went to France to study, died in France. And so he mourned her, kept her face enshrined, Was wedded to her spirit, could not brook The coming of another face to blur This face of faces! So the story went Around the country. But his grief was not The grief they told. The pang that gnawed his heart, And took his spirit, dulled his man’s desire Took root in shame, defeat, rejected love. He had gone east to meet her and to wed her, Now turned his thirtieth year; when he arrived He found his dear bride flown, a note for him, Left with the mother, saying she had flown, And could not marry him, it would not do, She did not love him as a woman should Who makes a pact for life; her heart was set For now upon her music, she was off To France for study, wished him well, in truth— Some woman waited him who was his mate.... So Merival read over many times The letter, tried to find a secret hope Lodged back of words—was this a woman’s way To lure him further, win him to more depths? He half resolved to follow her to France; Then as he thought of what he was himself In riches, breeding, place, and manliness His egotism rose, fed by the hurt: She might stay on in France for aught he cared! What was she, anyway, that she could lose Such happiness and love? for he had given In a great passion out of a passionate heart All that was in him—who was she to spurn A gift like this? Yet always in his heart Stirred something which by him was love and hate. And when the word came she had died, the word She loved a maestro, and the word like gas, Which poisons, creeps and is not known, that death Came to her somehow through a lawless love, Or broken love, disaster of some sort, [Pg 15] [Pg 16] His spirit withered with its bitterness. And in the years to come he feared to give With unreserve his heart, his leaves withheld From possible frost, dreamed on and drifted on Afraid to venture, having scarcely strength To seek and try, endure defeat again. Thus was his youth unsatisfied, and as hope Of something yet to be to fill his hope Died not, but with each dawn awoke to move Its wings, his youth continued past his years. The very cry of youth, which would not cease Kept all the dreams and passions of his youth Wakeful, expectant—kept his face and frame Rosy and agile as he neared the mark Of fifty years. But every day he sat As one who waited. What would come to him? What soul would seek him in this room of books? But yet no soul he found when he went forth, Breaking his solitude, to towns. What waste Thought Merival, of spirit, but what waste Of spirit in the lives he knew! What homes Where children starve for bread, or starve for love, Half satisfied, half-schooled are driven forth With aspirations broken, or with hopes Or talents bent or blasted! O, what wives Drag through the cheerless days, what marriages Cling and exhaust to death, and warp and stain The children! If a business, like this farm, Were run on like economy, a year Would see its ruin! But he thought, at last, Of spiritual economy, so to save The lives of men and women, use their powers To ends that suit. And thus when on a time A miner lost his life there at LeRoy, And when the inquest found the man was killed Through carelessness of self, while full of drink, Merival, knowing that the drink was caused By hopeless toil and by a bitter grief Touching a daughter, who had strayed and died, First wondered if in cases like to this Good might result, if there was brought to light All secret things; and in the course of time, If many deaths were probed, a store of truth Might not be gathered which some genius hand Could use to work out laws, instructions, systems For saving and for using wasting spirits, So wasted in the chaos, in the senseless Turmoil and madness of this reckless life, Which treats the spirit as the cheapest thing, Since it is so abundant. Thoughts like these Led Merival to run for coroner. The people wondered why he sought the office. But when they gave it to him, and he used His private purse to seek for secret faults, In lives grown insupportable, for causes Which prompted suicide, the people wondered, [Pg 17] [Pg 18] The people murmured sometimes, and his foes Mocked or traduced his purpose. Merival The coroner is now two years in office When Henry Murray’s daughter Elenor Found by the river, gives him work to do In searching out her life’s fate, cause of death, How, in what manner, and by whom or what Said Elenor’s dead body came to death; And of all things which might concern the same, With all the circumstances pertinent, Material or in anywise related, Or anywise connected with said death. And as in other cases Merival Construed the words of law, as written above: All circumstances material or related, Or anywise connected with said death, To give him power as coroner to probe To ultimate secrets, causes intimate In birth, environment, crises of the soul, Grief, disappointment, hopes deferred or ruined. So now he exercised his power to strip This woman’s life of vestments, to lay bare Her soul, though other souls should run and rave For nakedness and shame. So Merival Returning from the river with the body Of Elenor Murray thought about the woman; Recalled her school days in LeRoy—the night When she was graduated at the High School; thought About her father, mother, girlhood friends; And stories of her youth came back to him. The whispers of her leaving home, the trips She took, her father’s loveless ways. And wonder For what she did and made of self, possessed His thinking; and the fancy grew in him No chance for like appraisal had been his Of human worth and waste, this man who knew Both life and books. And lately he had read The history of King William and his book. And even the night before this Elenor’s body Was found beside the river—this he read, Perhaps, he thought, was reading it when Elenor Was struck down or was choked. How strange the hour Whose separate place finds Merival with a book, And Elenor with death, brings them together, And for result blends book and death!... He knew By Domesday Book King William had a record Of all the crown’s possessions, had the names Of all land-holders, had the means of knowing The kingdom’s strength for war; it gave the data How to increase the kingdom’s revenue. It was a record in a case of titles, Disputed or at issue to appeal to. So Merival could say: My inquests show The country’s wealth or poverty in souls, And what the country’s strength is, who by right May claim his share-ship in the country’s life; How to increase the country’s glory, power. Why not a Domesday Book in which are shown A certain country’s tenures spiritual? And if great William held great council once To make inquiry of the nation’s wealth, [Pg 19] [Pg 20] Shall not I as a coroner in America, Inquiring of a woman’s death, make record Of lives which have touched hers, what lives she touched; And how her death by surest logic touched This life or that, was cause of causes, proved The event that made events? So Merival Brought in a jury for the inquest work As follows: Winthrop Marion, learned and mellow, A journalist in Chicago, keeping still His residence at LeRoy. And David Borrow, A sunny pessimist of varied life, Ingenious thought, a lawyer widely read. And Samuel Ritter, owner of the bank, A classmate of the coroner at Harvard. Llewellyn George, but lately come from China, A traveler, intellectual, anti-social Searcher for life and beauty, devotee Of such diversities as Nietzsche, Plato. Also a Reverend Maiworm noted for Charitable deeds and dreams. And Isaac Newfeldt Who in his youth had studied Adam Smith, And since had studied tariffs, lands and money, Economies of nations. And because They were the friends of Merival, and admired His life and work, they dropped their several tasks To serve as jurymen. The hunter came And told his story: how he found the body, What hour it was, and how the body lay; About the banner in the woman’s pocket, Which Coroner Merival had taken, seen, And wondered over. For if Elenor Was not a Joan too, why treasure this? Did she take Joan’s spirit for her guide? And write these words: “To be brave and not to flinch”? She wrote them; for her father said: “It’s true That is her writing,” when he saw the girl First brought to Merival’s office. Merival Amid this business gets a telegram: Tom Norman drowned, one of the men with whom He planned this trip to Michigan. Later word Tom Norman and the other, Wilbur Horne Are in a motor-boat. Tom rises up To get the can of bait and pitches out, His friend leaps out to help him. But the boat Goes on, the engine going, there they fight For life amid the waves. Tom has been hurt, Somehow in falling, cannot save himself, And tells his friend to leave him, swim away. His friend is forced at last to swim away, And makes the mile to shore by hardest work. Tom Norman, dead, leaves wife and children caught In business tangles which he left to build New strength, to disentangle, on the trip. The rumor goes that Tom was full of drink, Thus lost his life. But if our Elenor Murray Had not been found beside the river, what Had happened? If the coroner had been there, [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] And run the engine, steered the boat beside The drowning man, and Wilbur Horne—what drink Had caused the death of Norman? Or again, Perhaps the death of Elenor saved the life Of Merival, by keeping him at home And safe from boats and waters. Anyway, As Elenor Murray’s body has no marks, And shows no cause of death, the coroner Sends out for Dr. Trace and talks to him Of things that end us, says to Dr. Trace Perform the autopsy on Elenor Murray. And while the autopsy was being made By Dr. Trace, he calls the witnesses The father first of Elenor Murray, who Tells Merival this story: HENRY MURRAY Henry Murray, father of Elenor Murray, Willing to tell the coroner Merival All things about himself, about his wife, All things as well about his daughter, touching Her growth, and home life, if the coroner Would hear him privately, save on such things Strictly relating to the inquest, went To Coroner Merival’s office and thus spoke: I was born here some sixty years ago, Was nurtured in these common schools, too poor To satisfy a longing for a college. Felt myself gifted with some gifts of mind, Some fineness of perception, thought, began By twenty years to gather books and read Some history, philosophy and science. Had vague ambitions, analyzed perhaps, To learn, be wise. Now if you study me, Look at my face, you’ll see some trace of her: My brow is hers, my mouth is hers, my eyes Of lighter color are yet hers, this way I have of laughing, as I saw inside The matter deeper cause for laughter, hers. And my jaw hers betokening a will, Hers too, with chin that mitigates the will, Shading to softness as hers did. Our minds Had something too in common: first this will Which tempted fate to bend it, break it too— I know not why in her case or in mine. But when my will is bent I grow morose, And when it’s broken, I become a scourge To all around me. Yes, I’ve visited A life-time’s wrath upon my wife. This daughter When finding will subdued did not give up, But took the will for something else—went on By ways more prosperous; but alas! poor me! [Pg 24] [Pg 25] I hold on when defeated, and lie down When I am beaten, growling, ruminate Upon my failure, think of nothing else. But truth to tell, while we two were opposed, This daughter and myself, while temperaments Kept us at sword’s points, while I saw in her Traits of myself I liked not, also traits Of the child’s mother which I loathe, because They have undone me, helped at least—no less I see this child as better than myself, And better than her mother, so admire. Also I never trusted her; as a child She would rush in relating lying wonders; She feigned emotions, purposes and moods; She was a little actress from the first, And all her high resolves from first to last Seemed but a robe with flowing sleeves in which Her hands could hide some theft, some secret spoil. When she was fourteen I could see in her The passionate nature of her mother—well You know a father’s feelings when he sees His daughter sensed by youths and lusty men As one of the kind for capture. It’s a theme A father cannot talk of with his daughter. He may say, “have a care,” or “I forbid Your strolling, riding with these boys at night.” But if the daughter stands and eyes the father, As she did me with flaming eyes, then goes Her way in secret, lies about her ways, The father can but wonder, watch or brood, Or switch her maybe, for I switched her once, And found it did no good. I needed here The mother’s aid, but no, her mother saw Herself in the girl, and said she knew the girl, That I was too suspicious, out of touch With a young girl’s life, desire for happiness. But when this Alma Bell affair came up, And the school principal took pains to say My daughter was too reckless of her name In strolling and in riding, then my wife Howled at me like a tigress: whip that man! And as my daughter cried, and my wife screeched, And called me coward if I let him go, I rushed out to the street and finding him Beat up his face, though almost dropping dead From my exertion. Well, the aftermath Was worse for me, not only by the talk, But in my mind who saw no gratitude In daughter or in mother for my deed. The daughter from that day took up a course More secret from my eyes, more variant From any wish I had. We stood apart, And grew apart thereafter. And from that day My wife grew worse in temper, worse in nerves. And though the people say she is my slave, That I alone, of all who live, have conquered Her spirit, still what despotism works Free of reprisals, or of breakings-forth When hands are here, not there? But to return: One takes up something for a livelihood, And dreams he’ll leave it later, when in time His plans mature; and as he earns and lives, With some time for his plans, hopes for the day [Pg 26] [Pg 27]