The Coroner Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Edgar Lee Masters

The Coroner Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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Merival of a mother fair and good	A
A father sound in body and in mind	B
Rich through three thousand acres left to him	C
By that same father dying mother dead	D
These many years a bachelor lived alone	E
In the rambling house his father built of stone	E
Cut from the quarry near at hand above	F
The river's bend before it meets the island	G
Where Starved Rock rises	H
	-
Here he had returned	I
After his Harvard days took up the task	J
Of these three thousand acres while his father	K
Aging relaxed his hand From farm to farm	L
Rode daily kept the books bred cattle sheep	M
Raised seed corn tried the secrets of DeVries	N
And Burbank in plant breeding	O
	-
Day by day	P
His duties ended he sat at a window	Q
In a great room of books where lofty shelves	R
Were packed with cracking covers newer books	S
Flowed over on the tables round the globes	T
And statuettes of bronze Upon the wall	U
The portraits hung of father and of mother	K
And two moose heads above the mantel stared	V
The trophies of a hunt in youth	W
	-
So Merival	U
At a bay window sat in the great room	X
Felt and beheld the stream of life and thought	Y
Flow round and through him to a sound in key	Z
With his own consciousness the murmurous voice	A2
Of his own soul	U
	-
Along a lawn that sloped	Y
Some hundred feet to the river he would muse	B2
Or through the oaks and elms and silver birches	B2
Between the plots of flowers and rows of box	B2
Look at the distant scene of hilly woodlands	B2
And why no woman in his life no face	B2
Smiling from out the summer house of roses	B2
Such riotous flames against the distant green	C2
And why no sons and daughters strong and fair	D2
To use these horses ponies tramp the fields	B2
Shout from the tennis court swim skate and row	Q
He asked himself the question many times	B2
And gave himself the answer It was this	B2
	-
At twenty five a woman crossed his path	E2
Let's have the story as the world believes it	Y
Then have the truth She was betrothed to him	C
But went to France to study died in France	B2
And so he mourned her kept her face enshrined	Y
Was wedded to her spirit could not brook	F2
The coming of another face to blur	K
This face of faces So the story went	Y
Around the country But his grief was not	Y
The grief they told The pang that gnawed his heart	Y
And took his spirit dulled his man's desire	K
Took root in shame defeat rejected love	F
He had gone east to meet her and to wed her	K
Now turned his thirtieth year when he arrived	Y
He found his dear bride flown a note for him	C
Left with the mother saying she had flown	E
And could not marry him it would not do	Y
She did not love him as a woman should	Y
Who makes a pact for life her heart was set	Y
For now upon her music she was off	G2
To France for study wished him well in truth	W
Some woman waited him who was his mate	Y
So Merival read over many times	B2
The letter tried to find a secret hope	H2
Lodged back of words was this a woman's way	P
To lure him further win him to more depths	B2
He half resolved to follow her to France	B2
Then as he thought of what he was himself	I2
In riches breeding place and manliness	B2
His egotism rose fed by the hurt	Y
She might stay on in France for aught he cared	Y
What was she anyway that she could lose	B2
Such happiness and love for he had given	J2
In a great passion out of a passionate heart	Y
All that was in him who was she to spurn	K2
A gift like this Yet always in his heart	Y
Stirred something which by him was love and hate	Y
And when the word came she had died the word	Y
She loved a maestro and the word like gas	B2
Which poisons creeps and is not known that death	L2
Came to her somehow through a lawless love	F
Or broken love disaster of some sort	Y
His spirit withered with its bitterness	B2
And in the years to come he feared to give	M2
With unreserve his heart his leaves withheld	Y
From possible frost dreamed on and drifted on	N2
Afraid to venture having scarcely strength	O2
To seek and try endure defeat again	P2
	-
Thus was his youth unsatisfied and as hope	H2
Of something yet to be to fill his hope	H2
Died not but with each dawn awoke to move	Q2
Its wings his youth continued past his years	B2
The very cry of youth which would not cease	B2
Kept all the dreams and passions of his youth	W
Wakeful expectant kept his face and frame	R2
Rosy and agile as he neared the mark	S2
Of fifty years	B2
	-
But every day he sat	Y
As one who waited What would come to him	C
What soul would seek him in this room of books	B2
But yet no soul he found when he went forth	T2
Breaking his solitude to towns	B2
	-
What waste	Y
Thought Merival of spirit but what waste	Y
Of spirit in the lives he knew What homes	B2
Where children starve for bread or starve for love	F
Half satisfied half schooled are driven forth	T2
With aspirations broken or with hopes	B2
Or talents bent or blasted O what wives	B2
Drag through the cheerless days what marriages	B2
Cling and exhaust to death and warp and stain	U2
The children If a business like this farm	L
Were run on like economy a year	V2
Would see its ruin But he thought at last	Y
Of spiritual economy so to save	W2
The lives of men and women use their powers	B2
To ends that suit	Y
	-
And thus when on a time	X2
A miner lost his life there at LeRoy	Y2
And when the inquest found the man was killed	Y
Through carelessness of self while full of drink	Z2
Merival knowing that the drink was caused	Y
By hopeless toil and by a bitter grief	A3
Touching a daughter who had strayed and died	Y
First wondered if in cases like to this	B2
Good might result if there was brought to light	Y
All secret things and in the course of time	X2
If many deaths were probed a store of truth	W
Might not be gathered which some genius hand	Y
Could use to work out laws instructions systems	B2
For saving and for using wasting spirits	B2
So wasted in the chaos in the senseless	B2
Turmoil and madness of this reckless life	B3
Which treats the spirit as the cheapest thing	O
Since it is so abundant	Y
	-
Thoughts like these	B2
Led Merival to run for coroner	K
The people wondered why he sought the office	B2
But when they gave it to him and he used	Y
His private purse to seek for secret faults	B2
In lives grown insupportable for causes	B2
Which prompted suicide the people wondered	Y
The people murmured sometimes and his foes	B2
Mocked or traduced his purpose	B2
	-
Merival	U
The coroner is now two years in office	B2
When Henry Murray's daughter Elenor	K
Found by the river gives him work to do	Y
In searching out her life's fate cause of death	L2
How in what manner and by whom or what	Y
Said Elenor's dead body came to death	L2
And of all things which might concern the same	R2
With all the circumstances pertinent	Y
Material or in anywise related	Y
Or anywise connected with said death	L2
And as in other cases Merival	U
Construed the words of law as written above	F
All circumstances material or related	Y
Or anywise connected with said death	L2
To give him power as coroner to probe	C3
To ultimate secrets causes intimate	Y
In birth environment crises of the soul	U
Grief disappointment hopes deferred or ruined	Y
So now he exercised his power to strip	D3
This woman's life of vestments to lay bare	K
Her soul though other souls should run and rave	W2
For nakedness and shame	R2
	-
So Merival	U
Returning from the river with the body	Y
Of Elenor Murray thought about the woman	J2
Recalled her school days in LeRoy the night	Y
When she was graduated at the High School thought	Y
About her father mother girlhood friends	B2
And stories of her youth came back to him	C
The whispers of her leaving home the trips	B2
She took her father's loveless ways And wonder	K
For what she did and made of self possessed	Y
His thinking and the fancy grew in him	C
No chance for like appraisal had been his	B2
Of human worth and waste this man who knew	Y
Both life and books And lately he had read	Y
The history of King William and his book	F2
And even the night before this Elenor's body	Y
Was found beside the river this he read	Y
Perhaps he thought was reading it when Elenor	K
Was struck down or was choked How strange the hour	K
Whose separate place finds Merival with a book	F2
And Elenor with death brings them together	K
And for result blends book and death He knew	Y
By Domesday Book King William had a record	Y
Of all the crown's possessions had the names	B2
Of all land holders had the means of knowing	O
The kingdom's strength for war it gave the data	Y
How to increase the kingdom's revenue	Y
It was a record in a case of titles	B2
Disputed or at issue to appeal to	Y
So Merival could say My inquests show	Q
The country's wealth or poverty in souls	B2
And what the country's strength is who by right	Y
May claim his share ship in the country's life	B3
How to increase the country's glory power	K
Why not a Domesday Book in which are shown	E
A certain country's tenures spiritual	U
And if great William held great council once	B2
To make inquiry of the nation's wealth	E3
Shall not I as a coroner in America	Y
Inquiring of a woman's death make record	Y
Of lives which have touched hers what lives she touched	Y
And how her death by surest logic touched	Y
This life or that was cause of causes proved	Y
The event that made events	B2
	-
So Merival	U
Brought in a jury for the inquest work	F3
As follows Winthrop Marion learned and mellow	U
A journalist in Chicago keeping still	U
His residence at LeRoy And David Borrow	U
A sunny pessimist of varied life	B3
Ingenious thought a lawyer widely read	Y
And Samuel Ritter owner of the bank	G3
A classmate of the coroner at Harvard	Y
Llewellyn George but lately come from China	Y
A traveler intellectual anti social	U
Searcher for life and beauty devotee	Y
Of such diversities as Nietzsche Plato	U
Also a Reverend Maiworm noted for	K
Charitable deeds and dreams And Isaac Newfeldt	U
Who in his youth had studied Adam Smith	H3
And since had studied tariffs lands and money	Y
Economies of nations	B2
	-
And because	B2
They were the friends of Merival and admired	U
His life and work they dropped their several tasks	B2
To serve as jurymen	Y
	-
The hunter came	R2
And told his story how he found the body	Y
What hour it was and how the body lay	U
About the banner in the woman's pocket	U
Which Coroner Merival had taken seen	Y
And wondered over For if Elenor	K
Was not a Joan too why treasure this	B2
Did she take Joan's spirit for her guide	U
And write these words To be brave and not to flinch	I3
She wrote them for her father said It's true	K
That is her writing when he saw the girl	U
First brought to Merival's office	B2
	-
Merival	U
Amid this business gets a telegram	J3
Tom Norman drowned one of the men with whom	X
He planned this trip to Michigan Later word	U
Tom Norman and the other Wilbur Horne	Y
Are in a motor boat Tom rises up	K3
To get the can of bait and pitches out	U
His friend leaps out to help him But the boat	U
Goes on the engine going there they fight	U
For life amid the waves Tom has been hurt	U
Somehow in falling cannot save himself	I2
And tells his friend to leave him swim away	U
His friend is forced at last to swim away	U
And makes the mile to shore by hardest work	F3
Tom Norman dead leaves wife and children caught	U
In business tangles which he left to build	U
New strength to disentangle on the trip	D3
The rumor goes that Tom was full of drink	Z2
Thus lost his life But if our Elenor Murray	K
Had not been found beside the river what	U
Had happened If the coroner had been there	K
And run the engine steered the boat beside	U
The drowning man and Wilbur Horne what drink	Z2
Had caused the death of Norman Or again	Y
Perhaps the death of Elenor saved the life	B3
Of Merival by keeping him at home	L3
And safe from boats and waters	B2
	-
Anyway	U
As Elenor Murray's body has no marks	B2
And shows no cause of death the coroner	K
Sends out for Dr Trace and talks to him	C
Of things that end us says to Dr Trace	B2
Perform the autopsy on Elenor Murray	K
And while the autopsy was being made	U
By Dr Trace he calls the witnesses	B2
The father first of Elenor Murray who	K
Tells Merival this story	K