| 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 opportunist |
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, sympathizing |
| 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-surfèd 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 |
Classic Poems |
| |
|
[ The Sea and the Skylark ] [ Windhover ] [ Spring ] [ Hurrahing in Harvest ] [ God's Grandeur ] [ The Wreck of the Deutschland ] [ The Caged Skylark ] [ Moonrise ] [ Inversnaid ] [ Pied Beauty ] [ as kingfishers catch fire ] [ In The Valley of the Elwy ] [ The May Magnificat ] |
