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The Alchemist

Louise Bogan

1897 –

1970

I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 22, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

Louise Bogan was born in Livermore Falls, Maine, in 1897. She is the author of several books of prose and poetry, and was the first woman to hold the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. The recipient of a 1968 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bogan died in 1970.

Themes

About this Poem

“The Alchemist” appears in Louise Bogan’s poetry collection Dark Summer (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929). In his essay, “The Poetry of Louise Bogan,” Theodore Roethke observed: “The body of her complete poetic work is not great, but the ‘range,’ both emotional and geographical, is much wider than might be expected from a lyric poet. […] Her poems can be read and reread: they keep yielding new meanings, as all good poetry should. The ground beat of the great tradition can be heard, with the necessary subtle variations. Bogan is one of the true inheritors. Her poems create their own reality, and demand not just attention, but the emotional and spiritual response of the whole man. Such a poet will never be popular, but can and should be a true model for the young. And the best work will stay in the language as long as the language survives.”

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More by this poet

A Tale

This youth too long has heard the break
Of waters in a land of change.
He goes to see what suns can make
From soil more indurate and strange.

He cuts what holds his days together
And shuts him in, as lock on lock:
The arrowed vane announcing weather,
The tripping racket of a clock;

Louise Bogan

1923

Knowledge

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

1923

Words for Departure

Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.
When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements,
The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,
Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots
As among grotesque trees.

Louise Bogan

1923

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The Alchemist

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