Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
18. The May Magnificat
M
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.