May arrives in this sonnet as the month for lovers to marry, and then a curious question follows: if you had to describe the month to someone in a world without spring, which detail would capture it best? The pink shower of apple blossoms? The soft green fields? The robin’s call? Jackson leans toward an ancient idea—that May was a sacred time—but then the poem takes a deeper, more intimate turn. No flower, she decides, can match the subtle sweetness of memories that unfold in the hearts of the old. These are people who lie in May’s warmth, quietly sunning themselves one last time before they die. The mood is tender and wistful, blending the season’s fresh beauty with a gentle awareness of mortality. The sonnet shifts from bright spring scenes to inner life, suggesting that May’s truest gift is not a blossom, but the quiet comfort and recollection it brings to those near the end of their days.
A Calendar of Sonnets: May — Summary
O Month when they who love must love and wed! Were one to go to worlds where May is naught, And seek to tell the memories he had brought From earth of thee, what were most fitly said? I know not if the rosy showers shed From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught The most with thy delight. Perhaps they read Thee best who in the ancient time did say Thou wert the sacred month unto the old: No blossom blooms upon thy brightest day So subtly sweet as memories which unfold In aged hearts which in thy sunshine lie, To sun themselves once more before they die.