MAY.
Also, in calendars, the month of May
Is marked the month of Love—two lovers stray,
In the old wood-cuts, in a forest green,
Looking their love into each other’s eyes
And dreaming happiness that never dies;
And there they talk unheard, and walk unseen,
Save by the birds, who chant a louder lay
To welcome such true lovers with the May.
*
The month of May was deemed by the Romans to be under the protection of Apollo; and it being the month wherein they made several expiations, they prohibited marrying in May. On the first day of May the Roman ladies sacrificed to Bona Dea, the Good Goddess, or the Earth, represented in the Frontispiece to the first volume of the Every-Day Book, with the zodiacal signs of the celestial system, which influences our sphere to produce its fruits in due order.
It is in May that “Spring is with us once more pacing the earth in all the primal pomp of her beauty, with flowers and soft airs and the song of birds every where about her, and the blue sky and the bright clouds above. But there is one thing wanting, to give that happy completeness to her advent, which belonged to it in the elder times; and without which it is like a beautiful melody without words, or a beautiful flower without scent, or a beautiful face without a soul. The voice of man is no longer heard, hailing her approach as she hastens to bless him; and his choral symphonies no longer meet and bless her in return—bless her by letting her behold and hear the happiness that she comes to create. The soft songs of women are no longer blended with her breath as it whispers among the new leaves; their slender feet no longer trace her footsteps in the fields and woods and wayside copses, or dance delighted measures round the flowery offerings that she prompted their lovers to place before them on the village green. Even the little children themselves, that have an instinct for the spring, and feel it to the very tips of their fingers, are permitted to let May come upon them, without knowing from whence the impulse of happiness that they feel proceeds, or whither it tends. In short,
‘All the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday:’
while man, man alone, lets the season come without glorying in it; and when it goes he lets it go without regret; as if ‘all seasons and their change’ were alike to him; or rather, as if he were the lord of all seasons, and they were to do homage and honour to him, instead of he to them! How is this? Is it that we have ‘sold our birthright for a mess of pottage?’—that we have bartered ‘our being’s end and aim’ for a purse of gold? Alas! thus it is:
‘The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away—a sordid boon!’
—But be this as it may, we are still able to feel what nature is, though we have in a great measure ceased to know it; though we have chosen to neglect her ordinances, and absent ourselves from her presence, we still retain some instinctive reminiscences of her beauty and her power; and every now and then the sordid walls of those mud hovels which we have built for ourselves, and choose to dwell in, fall down before the magic touch of our involuntary fancies, and give us glimpses into ‘that imperial palace whence we came,’ and make us yearn to return thither, though it be but in thought.
‘Then sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor’s sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!’”[144]
[144] Mirror of the Months.