Said the May Day Saints to the Grey Day Saints,

Singing across the year:

How is it with you in October?

With us the meadows are green,

And the grass is warm with the sun,

And strown with the golden pence

Of the coltsfoot, our offertory.

The tapers are lit for our feast—

Tall tapers are lit for our feast

In the drooping horse-chestnut boughs;

And the thrushes serve our Mass

There in the white thorn hedge,

Where the bloom is breaking against

A smudgy, sweet, grey sky

That shall give us holy water....

Oh, tell us, October Saints,

How you fare at the end of the year.

Are you cold in the draught of the year?—

On the edge of the fog of All Saints

And the gloom of the Holy Souls?

Said the Grey Day Saints to the May Day Saints,

Singing across the year:

How is it with you in the Spring?

The leaves in the wood are red,

And the frightened trees are a-shake

Down by the moaning brook.

The birds sweep the sky with desperate wings of escape.

There is none to serve our Mass,

And the high wind is our Priest.

No censer swings for us

From the lime-tree’s blossomed boughs;

Yet have we joy of our feast,

For we know that the Child is near—

The Child Who is born in December,

In the frozen December stillness.

Round Him the year shall wake,

And climb up the Spring into May,

To the feast of Philip and James.

The tapers of Christ’s own Mass

Shall rekindle the fading sun,

And Mary shall lift her Babe

To the horn of the wintry moon,

And ride Him into a Happy New Year.