Epitaph for a Romantic Woman

By Louise Bogan 1897–1970 Louise Bogan

She has attained the permanence

She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning.

Untended stalks blow over her

Even and swift, like young men running.

Always in the heart she loved

Others had lived,—she heard their laughter.

She lies where none has lain before,

Where certainly none will follow after.

Louise Bogan, “Epitaph for a Romantic Woman” from Body of this Death: Poems (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1923). Copyright 1923 by Louise Bogan. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Louise Bogan.

Source: Body of this Death: Poems (Robert M. McBride, 1923)

Biography

Louise Bogan has been called by some critics the most accomplished woman poet of the twentieth century. Her subtle, restrained style was partially influenced by writers such as Rilke and Henry James, and partially by the English metaphysical poets such as George Herbert, John Donne, and Henry Vaughan, though she distanced herself from her intellectually rigorous, metaphysical contemporaries. Some critics have placed her in a . . .

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