Select Search World Factbook Roget's Int'l Thesaurus Bartlett's Quotations Respectfully Quoted Fowler's King's English Strunk's Style Mencken's Language Cambridge History The King James Bible Oxford Shakespeare Gray's Anatomy Farmer's Cookbook Post's Etiquette Brewer's Phrase & Fable Bulfinch's Mythology Frazer's Golden Bough All Verse Anthologies Dickinson, E. Eliot, T.S. Frost, R. Hopkins, G.M. Keats, J. Lawrence, D.H. Masters, E.L. Sandburg, C. Sassoon, S. Whitman, W. Wordsworth, W. Yeats, W.B. All Nonfiction Harvard Classics American Essays Einstein's Relativity Grant, U.S. Roosevelt, T. Wells's History Presidential Inaugurals All Fiction Shelf of Fiction Ghost Stories Short Stories Shaw, G.B. Stein, G. Stevenson, R.L. Wells, H.G. Verse > Gerard Manley Hopkins > Poems PREVIOUS NEXT CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918. 18. The May Magnificat M AY 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. See Notes.