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

In the country whereto I GOI shall not see the face of my friend Nor her hair the color of sunburned grasses;Together we shall not find The land on whose hills bend the new mooning 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 splendors 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 Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?

— Louise Bogan

True revolutions ... restore more than they destroy.

— Louise Bogan