Louise Bogan > Quotes

“O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.”
― Louise Bogan

“The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?”
― Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room: The Autobiography of Louise Bogan

“Come, drunks and drug-takers; come perverts unnerved!
Receive the laurel, given, though late, on merit; to whom
and wherever deserved.

Parochial punks, trimmers, nice people, joiners true-blue,
Get the hell out of the way of the laurel. It is deathless
And it isn't for you.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“Goodbye, goodbye!
There was so much to love, I could not love it all;
I could not love it enough.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“...in a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart.”
― Louise Bogan

“At midnight tears
Run into your ears.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“Perhaps this very instant is your time.”
― Louise Bogan

“I'll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound.”
― Louise Bogan

“I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!”
― Louise Bogan

“I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.”
― Louise Bogan

“In the country whereto I go
I shall not see the face of my friend
Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;
Together we shall not find
The land on whose hills bends the new moon
In air traversed of birds.

What have I thought of love?
I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow."
I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendor
As a wind out of old time . . .

But there is only the evening here,
And the sound of willows
Now and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.

-- from "Betrothed”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“Pasture, stone wall, and steeple,
What most perturbs the mind:
The heart-rending homely people,
Or the horrible beautiful kind?”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth,
You have said my name as a prayer.
Here where trees are planted by water
I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret,
And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“You need some place to work in. That's the door half open.”
― Louise Bogan

“...Unaccustomed sense of peace did not depend on...'the whim of any fallible creature, or...economic security, or the weather. I don't know where it comes from. Jung states that such serenity is always a miracle...I am so glad that the therapists of my maturity and the saints of my childhood agree on one thing.”
― Louise Bogan

“Tea instead of gin will warm the heart.”
― Louise Bogan

“But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland.
It becomes a hell.”
― Louise Bogan

“Slipping in blood, by his own hand, through pride,
Hamlet, Othello, Coriolanus fall.
Upon his bed, however, Shakespeare die,
Having endured them all.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“Song for the Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.
Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.

Now that I have your face by heart, I look.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music's cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.

Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.

Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.”
― Louise Bogan, Collected Poems 1923-1953

“Leave-Taking"

I do not know where either of us can turn
Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear
The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall wish not to be alone
And that love were not dispersed and set free—
Though you defeat me,
And I be heavy upon you.

But like earth heaped over the heart
Is love grown perfect.
Like a shell over the beat of life
Is love perfect to the last.
So let it be the same
Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;
Let us know this for leavetaking,
That I may not be heavy upon you,
That you may blind me no more.

Originally published in Poetry, August 1922.”
― Louise Bogan, Body of This Death

“Night"

The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on cloudless nights,
The water reflects
The firmament’s partial setting;

—O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“The soprano studies for seven years in order to be able to open her mouth and make loud sounds for three hours on end.”
― Louise Bogan

“After The Persian"

1

I have wept with the spring storm;
Burned with the brutal summer.
Now, hearing the wind and the twanging bow-strings
I know what winter brings.

The hunt sweeps out upon the plain
And the garden darkens.
They will bring the trophies home
To bleed and perish
Beside the trellis and the lattices,
Beside the fountain, still flinging diamond water,
Beside the pool
(Which is eight-sided, like my heart).

2

All has been translated into treasure:
Weightless as amber,
Translucent as the currant on the branch,
Dark as the rose's thorn.

Where is the shimmer of evil?
This is the shell's iridescence
And the wild bird's wing.

3

Ignorant, I took up my burden in the wilderness.
Wise with great wisdom, I shall lay it down upon flowers.

4

Goodbye, goodbye!
There was so much to love, I could not love it all;
I could not love it enough.

Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find.
Let the crystal clasp them
When you drink your wine, in autumn.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“The best time to write about one’s childhood is in the early thirties, when the contrast between early forced passivity and later freedom is marked; and when one’s energy is in full flood. Later, not only have the juices dried up, and the energy ceased to be abundant, but the retracing of the scene of earliest youth has become a task filled with boredom and dismay. The figures that surrounded one have now turned their full face toward us; we understand them perhaps still partially, but we know them only too well. They have ceased to be background to our own terribly important selves; they have irremediably taken on the look of figures in a tragi-comedy; for we know their end, although they themselves do not yet know it. And now—in the middle-fifties—we have traced and retraced their tragedy so often that, in spire of the understanding we have, it bores and offends us. There is a final antidote we must learn: to love and forgive them. This attitude comes hard and must be reached with anguish. For if one is to deal with people in the past—of one’s past—at all, one must feel neither anger nor bitterness. We are not here to expose each other, like journalists writing gossip, or children blaming others for their own bad behavior. And open confession, for certain temperaments (certainly my own), is not good for the soul, in any direct way. To confess is to ask for pardon; and the whole confusing process brings out too much self-pity and too many small emotions in general. For people like myself to look back is a task. It is like re-entering a trap, or a labyrinth, from which one has only too lately, and too narrowly, escaped.”
― Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room: The Autobiography of Louise Bogan

“Now that I know
How passion warms little
Of flesh in the mould,
And treasure is brittle,―

I'll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound”
― Louise Bogan

“Song for the Last Act

Now that I have your face by heart, I look

Less at its features than its darkening frame

Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,

Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd's crook.

Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease

The lead and marble figures watch the show

Of yet another summer loath to go

Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.


Now that I have your face by heart, I look.


Now that I have your voice by heart, I read

In the black chords upon a dulling page

Music that is not meant for music's cage,

Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.

The staves are shuttled over with a stark

Unprinted silence. In a double dream

I must spell out the storm, the running stream.

The beat's too swift. The notes shift in the dark.


Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.


Now that I have your heart by heart, I see

The wharves with their great ships and architraves;

The rigging and the cargo and the slaves

On a strange beach under a broken sky.

O not departure, but a voyage done!

The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps

Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps

Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.


Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.”
― Louise Bogan

“Goodbye, goodbye!
There was so much to love, I could not love it all;
I could not love it enough.

— Louise Bogan, from “After the Persian,” The Blue Estuaries: Poems: 1923-1968. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux October 31, 1995) Originally published November 1st 1974.”
― Louise Bogan, The Blue Estuaries

“No woman should be shame-faced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart.”
― Louise Bogan