The jurymen are seated here and there In Merival's great library. They smoke, And drink a little beer or Scotch. Arise At times to read the evidence taken down, And typed for reference. Before them lie Elenor Murray's letters, all the letters Written to Merival--there's Alma Bell's, And Miriam Fay's, letters anonymous. The article of Roberts in the _Dawn_, That one of Demos, Hogos; a daily file Of Lowell's _Times_--Lowell has festered now Some weeks, a felon-finger in a stall. And where is Barrett Bays? In Kankakee Where Elenor Murray's ancestor was kept. The strain and shame had broken him; a fear Fell on him of a consequence when the coroner Still kept him with a deputy. He grew wild, Attacked the deputy, began to wander And show some several selves. A multiple Spirit of devils had him. Dr. Burke Went over him and found him mad. And now The jury meet amid a rapid shift Of changes, mist and cloud. The man is sick Who administers the country. Has come back To laud the pact of peace; his auditors Turn silently away, whole states assemble To hear and turn away, sometimes to heckle. And if a mattoid emperor caused the war, And Elenor Murrays put the emperor down, The emperor, could he laugh at all, can laugh To see a country, bent to spend its last Dollar, its blood to the last drop, having spent Enough of these, go mad as Barrett Bays. And like a headless man, seen in a dream, Go capering in an ecstasy of doubt, Regret and disillusion. He can laugh To see the pact, which took the great estate, Once his and God's, and wrapt it as with snakes That stung and sucked, rejected in the land That sent these Elenor Murrays to make free The world from despotism. See that very land Crop despotisms--so the jury sees Convened to end the case of Elenor Murray....