international poetry month: easter edition

"Loveliest of Trees"

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 years a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodland I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A.E. Housman 1896


A lot of ink has been spent speculating about "snow" in the last line, whether he meant it literally or figuratively.  This year, of course, a person could achieve both, going to look at the cherry trees this weekend.  Oy.