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 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-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.