Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
   Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
   The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
   The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
   Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
   Mirth and youth and warm desire!
   Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
   Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

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.

  Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come,
  And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom
            Ye learn your song:
Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there,
  Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air
            Bloom the year long!

  Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
  Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
            A throe of the heart,
Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
  No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
            For all our art.

  Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
  We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
            As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
  Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
            Welcome the dawn.