The Cherry Tree

This poem by A. E. Housman from his epic 'A Shropshire Lad ' is one of my favourites. It is written from the viewpoint of a young man of twenty who has woken up to his own mortality. He realises that he will only see so many springs and therefore goes to look more intently at the cherry blossoms. As I am considerably older than twenty the knowledge of my own mortality is even more acute! However it makes me more mindful of beauty and this precious human life.

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 three score 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.