Gerard Manley Hopkins: The May Magnificat

May 1878

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.

[Poems (fourth edition) ed. W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie, 42.]

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 05/04/03 09:30:01 PM
Categorized as Literary.