To May

May, thou month of rosy beauty
Month, when pleasure is a duty ;
Month of maids that milk the kine.
Bosom rich, and breath divine ;
Month of bees, and month of flowers,
Month of blossom-laden bowers ;
Month of little hands with daisies,
Lovers' love, and poets' praises ;

O thou merry month complete,
May, thy very name is sweet !
May was maid in olden times.
And is still in Scottish rhymes ;
May's the blooming hawthorn bough;
May's the month that 's laughing now.

I no sooner write the word,
Than it seems as though it heard,
And looks up, and laughs at me,
Like a sweet face, rosily, —
Like an actual colour bright.
Flushing from the paper's white ;
Like a bride that knows her power,
Started in a summer bower.

If the rains that do us wrong
Come to keep the winter long
And deny us thy sweet looks,
I can love thee, sweet, in books,
Love thee in the poets' pages,
Where they keep thee green for ages ;
Love and read thee, as a lover
Reads his lady's letters over,
Breathing blessings on the art,
Which commingles these that part.

There is May in books forever ;
May will part from Spenser never ;
May's in Milton, May 's in Prior,
May's in Chaucer, Thomson, Dyer ;
May's in all the Italian books ;
She has old and modern nooks.
Where she sleeps with nymphs and elves
In happy places they call shelves.
And will rise, and dress your rooms
With a drapery thick with blooms.

Come, ye rains then, if ye will,
May 's at home, and with me still :
But come rather, thou, good weather,
And find us in the fields together.