| May is Mary’s month, and I |
| Muse at that and wonder why: |
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| Her feasts follow reason, |
| Dated due to season— |
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| Candlemas, Lady Day; | |
| But the Lady Month, May, |
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| Why fasten that upon her, |
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| With a feasting in her honour? |
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| Is it only its being brighter |
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| Than the most are must delight her? | |
| Is it opportunest |
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| And flowers finds soonest? |
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| Ask of her, the mighty mother: |
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| Her reply puts this other |
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| Question: What is Spring?— | |
| Growth in every thing— |
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| Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, |
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| Grass and greenworld all together; |
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| Star-eyed strawberry-breasted |
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| Throstle above her nested | |
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| Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin |
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| Forms and warms the life within; |
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| And bird and blossom swell |
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| In sod or sheath or shell. |
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| All things rising, all things sizing | |
| Mary sees, sympathising |
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| With that world of good, |
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| Nature’s motherhood. |
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| Their magnifying of each its kind |
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| With delight calls to mind | |
| How she did in her stored |
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| Magnify the Lord. |
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| Well but there was more than this: |
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| Spring’s universal bliss |
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| Much, had much to say | |
| To offering Mary May. |
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| When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple |
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| Bloom lights the orchard-apple |
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| And thicket and thorp are merry |
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| With silver-surfèd cherry | |
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| And azuring-over greybell makes |
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| Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes |
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| And magic cuckoocall |
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| Caps, clears, and clinches all— |
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| This ecstasy all through mothering earth | |
| Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth |
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| To remember and exultation |
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| In God who was her salvation. |
