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?
    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: -
    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: - ...