<P> "Portrait of a Lady" is a poem by American - British poet T.S. Eliot (1888--1965), first published in September 1915 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse . It was published again in March 1916 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, in February 1917 (without the epigraph) in The New Poetry: An Anthology, and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations . </P> <P> The poem's title is widely seen to be derived from the novel of the same name by Henry James . The poem's epigraph is a famous quotation from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta: "Thou hast committed - / Fornication: but that was in another country, / And besides, the wench is dead ." </P>

Portrait of a lady poem by ts eliot analysis