May is Mary's Month

• 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-surfed 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.
  
  Gerard Manley Hopkins