John Milton is remembered above all as the poet of *Paradise Lost*, a huge work about the Fall of humankind. "Song On May Morning" sits at the opposite end of the scale. It has ten short lines and a single sunrise, and nothing in it is dark or difficult. The poem welcomes the first of May, and its central idea is that spring is a generous, renewing force which transforms the whole landscape and calls for a human response of song.
The poem is built as a procession, and the camera moves steadily downward. It begins in the sky with "the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger", a herald announcing that day is coming. The star "comes dancing from the East" and "leads with her" the "Flowry May", so the movement is already festive, like a parade. Then we drop to earth. May "from her green lap throws / The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose". The image is of a woman scattering flowers, and the two colours are chosen with care: the strong yellow of the cowslip and the faint, washed-out pale of the primrose, the delicate shades of early spring. The view then widens to "Woods and Groves" and "Hill and Dale", and only in the final couplet do human beings appear, with "we" and "our early Song". The poem moves from star to flower to whole countryside to people, as if the season spreads outward until it reaches us.
The sound of the poem follows this shape. The first four lines are iambic pentameter, ten syllables each, in a steady, stately rhythm that suits a grand announcement. When the speaker turns to address May directly with "Hail bounteous May that dost inspire", the lines shrink to seven or eight syllables and the beat becomes lighter and quicker, almost skipping. Lines such as "Woods and Groves, are of thy dressing, / Hill and Dale, doth boast thy blessing" fall into a bouncing, dance-like pattern, and the feminine rhyme of "dressing" and "blessing" adds to the playfulness. Every line belongs to a rhyming couplet, so the poem has a neat, chiming quality, like a song that could be sung. The last line drops to eight syllables, and the poem ends quickly on the word "long".
Milton's word choices reward a closer look. May is personified as a generous lady, and "bounteous" tells us her gifts are abundant. The verb "inspire" literally means to breathe in, so May gives life and energy as well as pleasure. What she inspires is "Mirth and youth, and warm desire", a list that moves from laughter to youthfulness to something warmer and more physical, and the word "warm" quietly belongs to the season too. The woods and groves are "of thy dressing", so the landscape is clothed by May like a person being dressed for a festival. Then "blessing" gives the hills and dales an almost religious glow, and "Hail" gives the greeting a ceremonial ring. Notice too the pairs: "Mirth and youth", "Woods and Groves", "Hill and Dale". Their balanced phrasing makes the world feel orderly and harmonious.
The ending is the most interesting part. The speakers "salute" May with "our early Song", and the song is early in two senses: it is sung at dawn and at the start of the season. The poem therefore describes the act of welcoming while also being that welcome. The final wish, "wish thee long", is simple on the surface, but it hints that May does not last. We only wish for something to stay when we know it might not, so the cheerfulness has a faint shadow of time passing behind it.
The poem matters because it is so compact and so well controlled. It belongs to the old tradition of greeting May with songs and celebration, and in ten lines it still manages to move through the heavens, the earth and the human voice. For students who know Milton only as a serious, difficult poet, it shows another side of him: light-footed, colourful and delighted by the world.