Epitaph

By Elinor Wylie 1885–1928 Elinor Wylie

For this she starred her eyes with salt

And scooped her temples thin,

Until her face shone pure of fault

From the forehead to the chin.

In coldest crucibles of pain

Her shrinking flesh was fired

And smoothed into a finer grain

To make it more desired.

Pain left her lips more clear than glass;

It colored and cooled her hand.

She lay a field of scented grass

Yielded as pasture land.

For this her loveliness was curved

And carved as silver is:

For this she was brave: but she deserved

A better grave than this.

Elinor Wylie, “Epitaph” from Selected Works of Elinor Wylie, edited by Evelyn Helmick Hively. Used with the permission of The Kent State University Press, http://upress.kent.edu/books/Hively2.htm.

Source: Selected Works of Elinor Wylie (Kent State University Press, 2005)

Biography

Extravagantly praised in her lifetime, the poet and novelist Elinor Wylie suffered a posthumous reversal in her reputation but has experienced something of a revival of interest among feminist critics since the 1980s.

Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey to a socially prominent family, and grew up in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. As the daughter of a lawyer who later became solicitor general of the United . . .

Continue reading this biography