By 1878 the 'merry month' of May had become, for many Catholic Christians, the month dedicated to Mary the mother of Jesus. Manley Hopkins saw her as 'the universal mother' and he associated her pregnancy with 'the magnifying of each its kind'. His Jesuit superiors regarded him as an eccentric and rejected the poem. But doesn't 'May Magnificent', like the passion flower, illustrate the ongoing munificence of God in both Creation, and in Christ incarnate?