The
May Magnificat
(by Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., 1844-1889)
(by Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., 1844-1889)
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
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.
(Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was a convert to Roman Catholicism who was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1877. He was especially innovative in terms of imagery and rhythm, but published little during his lifetime; his reputation grew after his death, thanks to the effort of friends who worked hard to bring his writing the public attention.)
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