Laudator Temporis Acti

John Montague, "For the Hillmother," Selected Poems (Toronto: Exile Editions, 1991), p. 128:

Hinge of silence
            creak for us
Rose of darkness
            unfold for us
Wood anemone
            sway for us
Blue harebell
            bend to us
Moist fern
            unfurl for us
Springy moss
            uphold us
Branch of pleasure
            lean on us
Leaves of delight
            murmur for us
Odorous wood
            breathe on us
Evening dews
            pearl for us
Freshet of ease
            flow for us
Secret waterfall
            pour for us
Hidden cleft
            speak to us
Portal of delight
            inflame us
Hill of motherhood
            wait for us
Gate of birth
            open for us

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), "The Sense of Place," Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980), pp. 131-149 (at 142-143):

But in this poem by John Montague which also celebrates the flora of his fields, the common and humble vegetation of the hedgerows and headlands assumes all kinds of learning into it. The poem does not elude the learned intelligence but calls upon it. There is first of all the echo of the Marian litany and through that an appeal to the whole gorgeous liturgy of the Catholic Church; then behind that there is, I feel, an appeal to our sense of early Irish nature poetry, that glorified fern and branch and waterfall; and behind that again there is the notion that the curve of the hill is the curve of a loved one's beauty, its contour the contour of a woman with child.