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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Louisa S. Guggenberger (1845–1895)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Key Notes (1879). II. Afternoon

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,

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;

’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

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.

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!

Ebbing tide, and fleecy moon!

In the “line of least resistance,”

Flows the life of Afternoon.