Loveliest of trees
In ‘A Shropshire Lad’ published in 1896, A. E. Housman (1859–1936) wrote:
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
It’s a poem that has stayed with me throughout life since I first heard it and memorised it at Market Drayton Junior School in Shropshire some five decades ago: and I must agree with dear old A.E.; the cherry is a lovely tree. The Japanese even have a cherry blossom festival.
Eastertide was early this year in March and was unusually cold, so the cherry trees still had bare boughs then.
They’ve only just started blooming properly in Bristol now.
A Shropshire Lad is available free from Project Gutenberg.