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

Perché ti amiamo, perché ti cantiamo,

noi, noi tutti,

per la lunghezza dei nostri giorni,

la nostra lode ti rechiamo

dal labbro e dal cuore,

o fanciulla supremamente degna di lode?

Perché il nostro labbro e il nostro cuore

appartengono a te,

che sei per noi

come la rugiada per l’erba e per l’albero,

perché i caduti si ergono

e gli oppressi balzano incontro a te,

tu, speranza di Maggio

nelle nostre vie ottenebrate!