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-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.