Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

18. 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;         5 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?         10     Is it opportunest     And flowers finds soonest?   Ask of her, the mighty mother: Her reply puts this other     Question: What is Spring?—         15     Growth in every thing—   Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, Grass and greenworld all together;     Star-eyed strawberry-breasted     Throstle above her nested         20   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         25 Mary sees, sympathising     With that world of good,     Nature’s motherhood.   Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind         30     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         35     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         40   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         45 Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth     To remember and exultation     In God who was her salvation.