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Alma Bell To The Coroner
By Edgar Lee Masters
What my name is, or where I live, or if
I am that Alma Bell whose name is broached
With Elenor Murray's who shall know from this?
My hand-writing I hide in type, I send
This letter through a friend who will not tell.
But first, since no chance ever yet was mine
To speak my heart out, since if I had tried
These fifteen years ago to tell my heart,
I must have failed for lack of words and mind,
I speak my heart out now. I knew the soul
Of Elenor Murray, knew it at the time,
Have verified my knowledge in these years,
Who have not lost her, have kept touch with her
In letters, know the splendid sacrifice
She made in the war. She was a human soul
Earth is not blest with often.
First I say
I knew her when she first came to my class
Turned seventeen just then - such blue-bell eyes,
And such a cataract of dark brown hair,
And such a brow, sweet lips, and such a way
Of talking with a cunning gasp, as if
To catch breath for the words. And such a sense
Of fitness, beauty, delicacy. But more
Such vital power that shook her silver nerves,
And made her dim to others; but to me
She was all sanity of soul, her body,
The instruments of life, were overborne
By that great flame of hers. And if her music
Fell sometimes into discord, which I doubt,
It was her heart-strings which could not vibrate
For human weakness, what the soul of her
Struck for response; and when the strings so failed
She was more grieved than I, or anyone,
Who listened and expected more.
Well, then
What was my love? I am not loath to tell.
I could not touch her hand without a thrill,
Nor kiss her lips but I felt purified,
Exalted in some way. And if fatigue,
The hopeless, daily ills of teaching brought
My spirit to distress, and if I went,
As oftentimes I did, to call upon her
After the school hours, as I heard her step
Responding to my knock, my heart went up,
Her face framed by the opened door - what peace
Was mine to see it, peace ineffable
And rest were mine to sit with her and hear
That voice of hers where breath was caught for words,
That cunning gasp and pause!
I loved her then,
Have loved her always, love her now no less.
I feel her spirit somehow, can take out
Her letters, photograph, and find a joy
That such a soul lived, was in truth my soul,
Must always be my soul.
What was this love?
Why only this, shame nature if you will:
But since man's body is not man's alone,
Nor woman's body wholly feminine,
A biologic truth, our body's souls
Are neither masculine nor feminine,
But part and part; from whence our souls play forth
Part masculine, part feminine - this woman
Had that of body first which made her soul,
Or made her soul play in its way, and I
Had that of body which made soul of me
Play in its way. Our music met, that's all,
And harmonized. The flesh's explanation
Is not important, nor to tell whence comes
A love in the heart - the thing is love at last:
Love which unites and comforts, glorifies,
Enlarges spirit, woos to generous life,
Invites to sacrifice, to service, clothes
This poor dull earth with glory, makes the dawn
An hour of high resolve, the night a hope
For dawn for fuller life, the day a time
For working out the soul in terms of love.
This was my love for Elenor Murray - this
Her love for me, I think. Her sacrifice
In the war I traced to our love - all the good
Her life set into being, into motion
Has in it something of this love of ours.
How good is God who gives us love, the lens
Through which we see the beauty, hid from eyes
That have no love, no lens.
Then what are spirits?
Effluvia material of our bodies?
Or is the spirit all - the body nothing,
Since every atom, particle of matter
With its interstices of soul, divides
Until there is no matter, only soul?
But what is love but of the soul - what flesh
Knows love but through the soul? May it not be
As soul learns love through flesh, it may at last,
Helped on its way by flesh, discard the flesh: -
As cured men leave their crutches - and go on
Loving with spirits. For it seems to me
I must find Elenor Murray as a spirit,
Myself a spirit, love her as I loved her
These years on earth, but with a clearer fire,
Flame that is separate from fuel, burning
Eternal through itself.
And here a word:
My love for Elenor Murray never had
Other expression than the look of eyes,
The spiritual thrill of listening to her voice,
A hand clasp, kiss upon the lips at best,
Better to find her soul, as Plato says.
Too true I left LeRoy under a cloud,
Because of love for Elenor Murray - yet
Not lawless love, I write now to make clear
What love was mine - and you must understand.
But let me tell how life has dealt with me,
Then judge my purpose, dream, the quality
Of Elenor Murray judge, who in some way,
Somehow has drawn me onward, upward too,
I hope, as I have striven.
I did fear
Her safety, and her future, did reprove
Her conduct, its appearance, rather more
In dread of gossip, dread of ways to follow
From such free ways begun at seventeen,
In innocence, out of a vital heart.
But when a bud is opening what stray bees
Come to drag pollen over it, and set
Life going to the end in the fruit of life!
O, my wish was to keep her for some love
To ripen in a rich maturity.
My care proved useless - or shall I say so?
Or anyone say so? since no mind knows
What failure here may somewhere prove a gain.
There was that man who came into her life
With heart unsatisfied, bound to a woman
He wedded early. Elenor Murray's love
Destroyed this man by human measurements.
And he destroyed her, so they say. But yet
She poured her love upon him, lit her soul
With brighter flames for love of him. At last
She knew no thing but love and sacrifice.
She wrote me last her life was just one pain,
Had always been so from the first, and now
She wished to fling her spirit in the war,
Give, serve, nor count the cost, win death and God
In service in the war - O, loveliest soul
I pray and pray to meet you once again!
So was her life a ruin, was it waste?
She was a prodigal flower that never shut
Its petals, even in darkness, let her soul
Escape when, where it would.
But to myself:
I dragged myself to England from LeRoy
And plunged in life, philosophies of life,
Spinoza and what not, read poetry,
Heard music too, Tschaikowsky, Wagner, all
Who tried to make sound tell the secret thing
That drove me wild in searching love. And lovers
I had one after the other, having fallen
To that belief the way is by the body.
But I was fooled and grew by slow degrees.
And then there came a wild man in my life,
A vagabond, a madman, genius - well,
We both went mad, and I smashed everything,
And ran away, threw all the world for him,
Only to find myself worn out, half dead
At last, as it were out of delirium.
And for four years sat by the sea, or made
Visits to Paris, where I met the man
I married. Then how strange! I gave myself
Wholly to bearing children, just to find
Some explanation of myself, some work
Wholly absorbing, lives to take my love.
And here I was instructed, found a step
For my poor feet to mount by. Though submerged,
Alone too much, my husband not the mate
I dreamed of, hearing echoes in my dreams
Of London and of Paris, sometimes voices
Of lovers lost and vanished; still I've found
A peace sometimes, a stay, too, in the innocence
And helplessness of children.
But you see,
In spite of all we do, however high
And fiercely mounts desire, life imposes
Repression, sacrifice, renunciation.
And our poor souls fall muddied in the ditch,
Or take the discipline and live life out.
So Elenor Murray lived and did not fail.
And so it was the knowledge of her life
Kept me in spite of failures at the task
Of holding to my self.
These two months passed
I found I had not killed desire - found
Among a group a chance to try again
For happiness, but knew it was not there.
Then to my children I came back and said:
"Free once again through suffering." So I prayed:
"Come to me flame of spirit, fire of worship,
Bright fire of song; if I but be myself,
Work through my fate, you shall be mine at last."...
Then was it that I heard from Elenor Murray -
Such letters, such outpourings of herself!
Poor woman leaving love that could not be
More than it was; how wise she was to fly,
And use that love for service, as she did;
Extract its purest essence for the war,
And ease death with it, merging love and death
Into that mystic union, seen at last
By Elenor Murray.
When I heard she came
All broken from the war, and died somehow
There by the river, then she seemed to me
More near - I seemed to feel her; little zephyrs
Blowing about my face, when I sat looking
Over the sea in my rose bower, seemed
The exhalation of her soul that caught
Its breath for words. I see her in my dreams -
O, my pure soul, what have you been to me,
What must you be hereafter!
But my friend,
And I must call you friend, whose strength in life
Drives you to find economies of spirit,
And save the waste of spirit, you must find
Whatever waste there was of Elenor Murray
Of love or faith, or time, or strength, great gain
In spite of early chances, father, mother,
Too loveless, negligent, or ignorant;
Her mother instinct never blessed with children.
I sometimes think no life is without use -
For even weeds that sow themselves, frost reaped
And matted on the ground, enrich the soil,
Or feed some life. Our eyes must see the end
Of what these growths are for, before we say
Where waste is and where gain.
* * * * *
Coroner Merival woke to scan the Times,
And read the story of the suicide
Of Gregory Wenner, circle big enough
From Elenor Murray's death, but unobserved
Of Merival, until he heard the hint
Of Dr. Trace, who made the autopsy,
That Gregory Wenner might have caused the death
Of Eleanor Murray, or at least was near
When Elenor Murray died. Here is the story
Worked out by Merival as he went about
Unearthing secrets, asking here and there
What Gregory Wenner was to Elenor Murray.
The coroner had a friend who was the friend
Of Mrs. Wenner. Acting on the hint
Of Dr. Trace he found this friend and learned
What follows here of Gregory Wenner, then
What Mrs. Wenner learned in coming home
To bury Gregory Wenner. What he learned
The coroner told the jury. Here's the life
Of Gregory Wenner first:
Extra Info:
From the "Doomsday Book".
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