Modern American Poetry

(^386) Louis L. Martz
Our Lady of the Goldfinch,
Our Lady of the Candelabra,
Our Lady of the Pomegranate,
Our Lady of the Chair ... (CP,564)
And so on for twenty-three couplets of affectionate detail, only to conclude:
“But none of these, none of these / suggest her as I saw her,” though she had
something of the pagan and “gracious friendliness” of the “marble sea-maids
in Venice / who climb the altar-stair / at Santa Maria dei Miracoli” (CP,566).
This joyous, teasing mood is something rare in H.D., and it continues in its
tantalizing way. Her “veils were white as snow,”to use the language of Christ’s
transfiguration, but in fact she bore “none of her usual attributes; / the Child
was not with her” (CP,566–67). So then it was not Mary. But who then?
she must have been pleased with us,
for she looked so kindly at us
under her drift of veils,
and she carried a book.
This is a trap for the academic interpreter, whom she now proceeds to
parody:
Ah (you say), this is Holy Wisdom,
Santa Sophia,the SS of the Sanctus Spiritus ...
she brings the Book of Life, obviously. (CP,568–69)
And so on and so on. But now the poet intervenes.
she is the Vestal
from the days of Numa,
she carries over the cult
of the Bona Dea ...
This is a cult of which the Virgin Mary is perhaps a descendant, in her
beneficent and redemptive function. But she has another dimension: