It’s been a challenging week over here in our household. In my limited experience of parenthood, I have found it to be often the case that, as one child enters a more peaceful period, the other one will suddenly start acting out. My husband jokes that our kids conspire, timing their tantrums and fussy weeks so that at least one of them is testing our patience at any given time.
All of this to say, I am very tired. My husband and I just finished reading Benson’s The Lord of the World (1907) together, and I had every intention of reviewing it this Saturday as my weekly substack post. But I simply don’t have the strength or brain power left in me, after a week of my daughter’s sleep regression. The grey cells are not cooperating. So instead, I thought I’d share a wonderfully seasonally appropriate poem by Hopkins (I’ve written a post on a poem of his, ‘Inversnaid’, a few months back, too, in case you’re interested).
The ‘May Magnificat’ is a poem about the month of May, and its traditional association with Mary, Christ’s mother, in the Christian liturgical calendar. As always with Hopkins, I think the best way to understand his poetry is to read it - out loud if possible - over and over again, until you get a feel for his rhythm, and the meaning starts coming together, almost on its own. There are many more perceptive readers of Hopkins out there, who will doubtlessly explain far better than I could the subtleties of this poem. Having said that, what I find so beautiful about is Hopkins’ sense of Spring as a time when nature itself, which can be so capricious and hostile to man, seems to glorify God with its beauty. Creation is at its most alive (in the northern hemisphere at least) in the month of May, giving us a hint of eternal bliss while on earth. Just as nature appears motherly at this time of year, so Mary herself is the epitome of the mother figure. And just like springtime, Mary is rejoicing.
Like many of his poems, Hopkins’ ‘The May Magnificat’ is more easily enjoyed if one shares his Christian faith, but it is not inaccessible to those who don’t. There is much that is universal about his description of reveling in the beauty of blooming plants and newborn animals, and I hope you enjoy reading whichever of the two categories you fall into. Here is the poem in full.
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 nestedCluster 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-surfed cherryAnd 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.
I will hopefully be back next week with a longer post. Until then, if you’re in the UK like me, I hope you’re making the most of the good weather!