Amy Lowell In Pale Narcissus Mourns For Modern Poetry Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

'And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.'
-John 1: 5, The New Testament

on reading 'The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell'

you don't know how it feels to wear the sky-
the blue and the pearl shifting into moire,
roseate, taffeta; the very
life of roses in the arbor of her mind.

you don't understand this sheen of emerald
leaves and their transparency, the singing
through many waters as though
she were the wind.
it signifies.

and you will pretend you know,
that you can guess
the motive of an ivory shawl

the shell pink sash the amethyst
brocade and the pall of the face
through all this wilderness
of second guessing cruelty

of strange asides
on a summer wardrobe
for a winter bride oh.

splendid Cinderalla
of the sunburst heart
believing God in all His colours
could be magnified

in the finery of her rainbows,
opals scattered through the dark
of Poetry's wild surmise*

betrayed, comprehending nothing

mary angela douglas 3 december 2013

'wild surmise' of course is an allusion to the John Keat's poem
'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer', i.e. the following
passage:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
10
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien