May

This what I wrote last year about May being Mary's month - apparently we had terrible weather then as well. So, what could be better than another Marian poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins this year?

                                                The May Magnificat

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.

Newman, Hopkins, the Saints and Literature

It has been quite a fortnight for saints with a literary connection.

Today is the Memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman, the only novelist (I think) to have been recognised as a saint (see here, here, here and here for my earlier thoughts on Newman). Not that his work as a novelist (any more than St Thomas More's work as a writer) was what led to him being beatified.

Newman was an inspirational figure in all sorts of ways even during his own lifetime as I was reminded when I was in the Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga in Oxford this weekend, because not only did Newman preach there but it was also where Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was received into the Church by Newman, was a curate (see also here).

In recent days we have remembered St Francis of Assisi (4th October) about whom the novelist Julien Green (among many others) has written, Blessed Columba Marmion (3rd October) whose Christ in His Mysteries (available here for free in French and here for a price in English translation) inspired Messiaen's Vingt regards sur l'enfant Jesus, and the Holy Guardian Angels (2nd October), whom I mentioned the other day. And that's without even starting on those great writers: St Therese of the Child Jesus and St Jerome.

I should also mention Henry Garnett's The Blood Red Crescent and the Battle of Lepanto in connection with the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary last Sunday.

That should keep us going for a while.

May: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins wrote more than one poem about the Blessed Virgin Mary and the month of May. 'Ad Mariam' is perhaps the least well known, partly because there are some doubts about its attribution.

Given the weather we've been having in the UK, I particularly like the second stanza. But the final one is great as well!

Ad Mariam

When a sister, born for each strong month-brother,

   Spring's one daughter, the sweet child May,

Lies in the breast of the young year-mother

   With light on her face like the waves at play,

Man from the lips of him speaketh and saith,

At the touch of her wandering wondering breath

Warm on his brow: lo! where is another

   Fairer than this one to brighten our day?

We have suffered the sons of Winter in sorrow

   And been in their ruinous reigns oppressed,

And fain in the springtime surcease would borrow

   From all the pain of the past's unrest;

And May has come, hair-bound in flowers,

With eyes that smile thro' the tears of the hours,

With joy for to-day and hope for to-morrow

   And the promise of Summer within her breast!

And we that joy in this month joy-laden,

   The gladdest thing that our eyes have seen,

Oh thou, proud mother and much proud maiden—

   Maid yet mother as May hath been—

To thee we tender the beauties all

Of the month by men called virginal.

And, where thou dwellest in deep-groved Aidenn,

   Salute thee, mother, the maid-month's Queen!

For thou, as she, wert the one fair daughter

   That came when a line of kings did cease,

Princes strong for the sword and slaughter,

   That, warring, wasted the land's increase,

And like the storm-months smote the earth

Till a maid in David's house had birth,

That was unto Judah as May, and brought her

   A son for King, whose name was peace.

Wherefore we love thee, wherefore we sing to thee,

   We, all we, thro' the length of our days,

The praise of the lips and the hearts of us bring to thee,

   Thee, oh maiden, most worthy of praise;

For lips and hearts they belong to thee

Who to us are as dew unto grass and tree,

For the fallen rise and the stricken spring to thee,

   Thee, May-hope of our darkened ways!

Gerard Manley Hopkins - 'Duns Scotus's Oxford'

It's not that usual to cite the pope when studying English Literature but Pope Benedict XVI's General Audience on John Duns Scotus is genuinely useful for anyone wanting to appreciate Hopkins' 'Duns Scotus's Oxford'.