May Magnificat

Detail from 'Virgo inter Virgines', 1488, by The Master of the Legend of St Lucy (c.1435-c.1506)

May is Mary’s month, and I 
Muse at that and wonder why: 
Her feasts follow reason, 
Dated due to season -

Candlemas, Lady Day; 
But the Lady Month, May, 
Why fasten that upon her, 
With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter 
Than the most are must delight her? 
Is it opportunest 
And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her, the mighty mother: 
Her reply puts this other 
Question: What is Spring? - 
Growth in every thing -

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, 
Grass and greenworld all together; 
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted 
Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin 
Forms and warms the life within; 
And bird and blossom swell 
In sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing 
Mary sees, sympathising 
With that world of good, 
Nature's motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind 
With delight calls to mind 
How she did in her stored 
Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this: 
Spring’s universal bliss 
Much, had much to say 
To offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple 
Bloom lights the orchard-apple 
And thicket and thorp are merry 
With silver-surfed cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes 
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes 
And magic cuckoocall 
Caps, clears, and clinches all -

This ecstasy all through mothering earth 
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth 
To remember and exultation 
In God who was her salvation.

Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, 1844-1889