Sunday 13th May at 5pm - Holy Mass will be offered at the Church of St Therese of Lisieux, Sandfields, Port Talbot.
MAY MAGNIFICAT
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MAY is Mary’s month, and I | |
Muse at that and wonder why: | |
Her feasts follow reason, | |
Dated due to season— | |
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Candlemas, Lady Day; | |
But the Lady Month, May, | |
Why fasten that upon her, | |
With a feasting in her honour? | |
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Is it only its being brighter | |
Than the most are must delight her? | |
Is it opportunest | |
And flowers finds soonest? | |
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Ask of her, the mighty mother: | |
Her reply puts this other | |
Question: What is Spring?— | |
Growth in every thing— | |
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Flesh and fleece, fur and feather, | |
Grass and greenworld all together; | |
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted | |
Throstle above her nested | |
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Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin | |
Forms and warms the life within; | |
And bird and blossom swell | |
In sod or sheath or shell. | |
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All things rising, all things sizing | |
Mary sees, sympathising | |
With that world of good, | |
Nature’s motherhood. | |
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Their magnifying of each its kind | |
With delight calls to mind | |
How she did in her stored | |
Magnify the Lord. | |
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Well but there was more than this: | |
Spring’s universal bliss | |
Much, had much to say | |
To offering Mary May. | |
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When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple | |
Bloom lights the orchard-apple | |
And thicket and thorp are merry | |
With silver-surfèd cherry | |
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And azuring-over greybell makes | |
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes | |
And magic cuckoocall | |
Caps, clears, and clinches all— | |
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This ecstasy all through mothering earth | |
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth | |
To remember and exultation | |
In God who was her salvation.
Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ
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