May is Mary's Month

William Bouguereau (1825-1905)
L'innocence [Innocence]

The May Magnificat

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 everything --

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather

Grass and green world 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-surféd cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes

And magic cuckoo call 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