Romance — Summary

Georgia Douglas Johnson’s “Romance” is a short, sad reflection on how hope changes with age. In youth, the speaker imagines romance arriving like a rider and is confident she will smile and enjoy it. By middle age, that confidence falters: she wonders whether she could still smile if romance appeared. In the final lines, the tone sinks into certainty—not of fulfillment, but of loss. She says romance will pass by, yet she knows she will never smile, because it has already died for her. The poem turns on that shift from “surely” to “may” to “never.” The personified Romance becomes almost ghostly, a rider who comes too late or not at all. That final inversion—romance still approaching but the speaker unable to respond—makes the loss feel deeper than if it had simply vanished. The mood is quiet and mournful, a recognition of lost possibility rather than dramatic heartbreak.