Synopsis of The Blessed Virgin Mary

This poem was another Stonyhurst College poem, written in May, 1883, as part of the festival to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so should be linked to The May Magnificat, written five years earlier for the same festival. Hopkins picks up images from the latter poem here, especially of ‘Nature's motherhood' and ‘mothering earth', but now applying the image to the air. The poet Coventry Patmore, with whom Hopkins corresponded, liked this the best of all Hopkins' poems.