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The Birth Of Elenor Murray

by Edgar Lee Masters

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

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

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: -