The Limited originally appeared in Poetry magazine in 1933, and is protected by copyright. It can be found for example in: Hine, Daryl, and Joseph Parisi, eds. The Poetry Anthology, 1912-1977. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978.

The first line of this poem echoes the beginning of Drayton's poem Since there's no help.

Warren was the Poet Laureate of the United States in 1986. He was awared the National Book Award for Poetry in 1958, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1958 and 1979, and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry in 1967.