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.
Originally published in A Shropshire Lad (1896) by A. E. Housman. Public domain.
Analysis
“Loveliest of Trees” captures the brevity of life through a deceptively simple meditation on springtime. The speaker, reflecting on the cherry blossom in full bloom, measures his remaining years against the recurrence of beauty. The poem’s plain diction and tight quatrains conceal philosophical depth: to count time is to feel its vanishing. Yet Housman’s conclusion is not despairing — it is a vow to live more attentively, to embrace each spring as precious.
The image of the cherry tree “wearing white for Eastertide” layers natural and religious symbolism: renewal, purity, and resurrection coexist with awareness of mortality. The poem’s arithmetic — seventy years of life, twenty already gone — translates abstract time into something tangible and urgent. The speaker’s resolve “to see the cherry hung with snow” fuses observation with devotion, suggesting that beauty’s transience heightens its worth.
Housman’s mastery lies in restraint. In only twelve lines, he evokes the central paradox of human experience: that mortality deepens our appreciation of life. Like the blossoms he describes, his lyric endures through its clarity, discipline, and quiet poignancy.