MAY by JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT

MAY, thou month of rosy beauty,
Month when pleasure is a duty;
Month of maids that milk the kine,
Bosom rich, and health 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, the very name is sweet!
May was MAID in olden times,
And is still in Scottish rhymes—
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,—
Flushing from the paper's white;
Like a bride that knows her power,
Startled 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 those that part.

There is May in books forever:
May will part from Spencer 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.

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