A Song For Women.

By Annie Matheson (1853–1924)

WITHIN a dreary narrow room That looks upon a noisome street, Half fainting with the stifling heat, A starving girl works out her doom.     Yet not the less in God’s sweet air         5     The little birds sing, free of care,     And hawthorns blossom everywhere.   Swift, ceaseless toil scarce wins her bread: From early dawn till twilight falls, Shut in by four dull, ugly walls,         10 The hours crawl round with murderous tread.     And all the while, in some still place,     Where intertwining boughs embrace,     The blackbirds build, time flies apace.   With envy of the folk who die,         15 Who may at last their leisure take, Whose longed-for sleep none roughly wake, Tired hands the restless needle ply.     But far and wide in meadows green     The golden buttercups are seen,         20     And reddening sorrel nods between.   Too pure and proud to soil her soul, Or stoop to basely-gotten gain, By days of changeless want and pain The seamstress earns a prisoner’s dole.         25     While in the peaceful fields the sheep     Feed, quiet; and through heaven’s blue deep     The silent cloud-wings stainless sweep.   And if she be alive or dead, That weary woman scarcely knows;         30 But back and forth her needle goes In tune with throbbing heart and head.     Lo, where the leaning alders part,     White-bosomed swallows, blithe of heart,     Above still waters skim and dart.         35   O God in heaven! shall I, who share That dying woman’s womanhood, Taste all the summer’s bounteous good Unburdened by her weight of care?     The white moon-daisies star the grass,         40     The lengthening shadows o’er them pass,     The meadow tool is smooth as glass.

V. Unfulfilled.

By Louisa S. Guggenberger (1845–1895)

ERE yet the sunlight caught it where it lay,   I saw a snow-flake vanish utterly; I saw a blossom perish on the spray,   Ere yet its petals opened to the bee: I heard a yearning dissonance to-day         5   Fail, ere it found its final harmony.   These, symbols: yet—O saddest, and O best   Of Nature’s unfulfilments!—one hath passed Unscarred by any heart-strife to her rest   Who, scarcely fed, gave thanks for life’s repast,         10 And ere love’s first full throb had stirred her breast   Praised God for love, and smiling, smiled her last.   Well! well! such vanishings are breathings stilled   Ere yet they grew intense, and turned to sighs; We curse the stern world-providence that willed         15   The light away from waking baby-eyes; We sing the dirges of the Unfulfilled,   We suffer; not the innocence that dies.   It dies at our, and not its own expense,   We loved it, for it was exceeding white;         20 Who knows?—strong draughts of utmost sentience   Had left it, fevered, in a lurid night! Better a thousandfold that, lost to sense,   It lingers yet—the memory of a Light.

IV. Midnight.

By Louisa S. Guggenberger (1845–1895)

THERE are sea and sky about me,   And yet nothing sense can mark; For a mist fills all the midnight   Adding blindness to its dark.   There is not the faintest echo         5   From the life of yesterday: Not the vaguest stir foretelling   Of a morrow on the way.   ’Tis negation’s hour of triumph   In the absence of the sun;         10 ’Tis the hour of endings, ended,   Of beginnings, unbegun.   Yet the voice of awful silence   Bids my waiting spirit hark; There is action in the stillness,         15   There is progress in the dark.   In the drift of things and forces   Comes the better from the worse, Swings the whole of Nature upward,   Wakes, and thinks—a universe.         20   There will be more life to-morrow,   And of life, more life that knows; Though the sum of force be constant   Yet the Living ever grows.   So we sing of evolution,         25   And step strongly on our ways; And we live through nights in patience,   And we learn the worth of days.   In the silence of murk midnight   Is revealed to me this thing:         30 Nothing hinders, all enables   Nature’s vast awakening.

II. Afternoon.

By Louisa S. Guggenberger (1845–1895)

PURPLE headland over yonder,   Fleecy, sun-extinguished moon, I am here alone, and ponder   On the theme of Afternoon.   Past has made a groove for Present,         5   And what fits it is: no more. Waves before the wind are weighty;   Strongest sea-beats shape the shore.   Just what is is just what can be,   And the Possible is free;         10 ’Tis by being, not by effort,   That the firm cliff juts to sea.   With an uncontentious calmness   Drifts the Fact before the “Law”; So we name the ordered sequence         15   We, remembering, foresaw.   And a law is mere procession   Of the forcible and fit; Calm of uncontested Being,   And our thought that comes of it.         20   In the mellow shining daylight   Lies the Afternoon at ease, Little willing ripples answer   To a drift of casual breeze.   Purple headland to the westward!         25   Ebbing tide, and fleecy moon! In the “line of least resistance,”   Flows the life of Afternoon.

I. Morning.

By Louisa S. Guggenberger (1845–1895)

WHAT’S the text to-day for reading   Nature and its being by? There is effort all the morning   Thro’ the windy sea and sky.   All, intent in earnest grapple         5   That the All may let it be: Force, in unity, at variance   With its own diversity.   Force, prevailing into action,   Force, persistent to restrain,         10 In a twofold, one-souled wrestle   Forging Being’s freedom-chain.   Frolic! say you—when the billow   Tosses back a mane of spray? No; but haste of earnest effort;         15   Nature works in guise of play.   Till the balance shall be even   Swings the to and fro of strife; Till an awful equilibrium   Stills it, beats the Heart of Life.         20   What’s the text to-day for reading   Nature and its being by? Effort, effort all the morning,   Thro’ the sea and windy sky.

III. Twilight.

By Louisa S. Guggenberger (1845–1895) 

   GREY the sky, and growing dimmer,    And the twilight lulls the sea; Half in vagueness, half in glimmer,   Nature shrouds her mystery.   What have all the hours been spent for?         5   Why the on and on of things? Why eternity’s procession   Of the days and evenings?   Hours of sunshine, hours of gleaming,   Wing their unexplaining flight,         10 With a measured punctuation   Of unconsciousness, at night.   Just at sunset, was translucence,   When the west was all aflame; So I asked the sea a question,         15   And an answer nearly came.   Is there nothing but Occurrence?   Though each detail seem an Act, Is that whole we deem so pregnant   But unemphasizèd Fact?         20   Or, when dusk is in the hollows   Of the hill-side and the wave, Are things just so much in earnest   That they cannot but be grave?   Nay, the lesson of the Twilight         25   Is as simple as ’tis deep; Acquiescence, acquiescence,   And the coming on of sleep.