Month of May

​Words of Gerald Manley Hopkins shared by a parishioner for the month of May. 
 
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathizing
With that world of good,
Nature`s motherhood​

​Full poem below.

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The May Magnificat
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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 opportunist
       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, sympathizing
       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.