Loveliest of Trees

By A. E. Housman

“Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” is A. E. Housman’s 12-line poem about a young man who sees a cherry tree in blossom at Easter and realizes that, at 20, he has only 50 springs left to enjoy it. It is the second poem in A Shropshire Lad (1896), Housman’s best-loved book.

Our reading is that the poem’s power lies in its arithmetic. A cold little sum sits in the middle of a lyric about blossom, and a single word, “snow,” brings winter into the last line. Its answer to death is not wild living but attention: go and look at beautiful things, while you still can.

At a Glance

Poet
A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
First published
A Shropshire Lad (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1896), as poem II
Form
Lyric in three quatrains of rhymed couplets
Length
12 lines
Meter
Iambic tetrameter, with some seven-syllable lines that drop the first beat (“WEAR-ing WHITE for EAS-ter-TIDE”)
Era
Victorian
Best-known lines
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now / Is hung with bloom along the bough”

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · In Popular Culture · Related Poems

Summary

A young man stops in front of a cherry tree in full blossom beside a woodland path at Easter. He works out on the spot how many springs he has left: of a life of 70 years, 20 are gone, which leaves 50.

Fifty springs seem like plenty to most readers, but not to him. They are “little room” for looking at things in bloom, so he resolves to go about the woods and see the cherry “hung with snow” as often as he can.

The Poem

The text below follows A Shropshire Lad (1896), as transcribed from a scanned early edition on Wikisource.

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.

Background

“Loveliest of Trees” is the second poem in A Shropshire Lad, the 1896 sequence of 63 poems that Housman published at his own expense after a publisher turned it down. The book sold slowly at first, then became one of the best-loved volumes of English poetry, carried in soldiers’ packs in the First World War. Its Shropshire is largely an imagined landscape. Housman grew up in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, and knew the neighboring county mostly as the blue hills on his western horizon.

Housman spent his working life as a classical scholar, one of the most exacting editors of Latin poetry who ever lived, who gave decades to the text of the Roman poet Manilius. Precise counting came naturally to him. The phrase “threescore years and ten” comes from Psalm 90 in the King James Bible, where 70 years is the span of a human life. The poem takes that allowance as fixed and does the subtraction.

Analysis and Themes

Three things hold the poem up, and none of them is the cherry tree: a subtraction problem in the middle of a lyric, a single word exchanged between the first stanza and the last, and a response to mortality so modest it barely seems like one.

The Math Problem in the Middle

The second stanza is a sum said out loud. Seventy years, minus the 20 already gone, leaves 50. Housman even keeps the bookkeeper’s phrasing: “It only leaves me fifty more” sounds like a bank balance, not a lyric. The strangeness is who is counting. Most 20-year-olds act as though the supply of springs were endless, but this speaker has already totaled the column. The figure he reaches sounds generous, yet the poem calls it “little room,” measuring time as if it were floor space. The tone never tips into self-pity. It stays flat, exact, and faintly wry, which is why it lands.

Bloom to Snow

The best move in the poem is almost invisible. In the first stanza, the cherry “Is hung with bloom.” In the last line, it is “hung with snow.” Same verb, same tree, one word changed. On the surface, this is plain description, since cherry blossom really does look like snow on the branches. But snow belongs to winter, the season the poem never names, and by the last line it is sitting inside the spring picture. The white of Easter blossom and the white of the dead months become the same white, and Housman folds the end of the year into its beginning without saying so.

The Smallest Possible Carpe Diem

The poem belongs to the carpe diem tradition, the “seize the day” poems that urge readers to enjoy life while it lasts, and then quietly shrinks it. Herrick told the virgins to gather rosebuds, and Marvell’s lovers tore their pleasures “through the iron gates of life.” Housman’s answer to death is to go for more walks. There is no wild living and no last great passion, just attention, repeated as often as the years allow. It is easy to read this as an anticlimax, and the poem takes that risk on purpose. Its wager is that looking hard at one beautiful thing, again and again, is a serious enough reply to mortality.

Form and Technique

The poem has 12 lines in three quatrains, each made of two rhymed couplets (AABB). The meter is iambic tetrameter, but several lines drop their first unstressed syllable, as in “WEAR-ing WHITE for EAS-ter-TIDE,” which gives the poem the lilt of a folk song. The rhymes are plain, mostly single syllables: “now” and “bough,” “ten” and “again,” “go” and “snow.”

The couplet is the tightest closing unit English verse has, and each pair snaps shut on its rhyme, a fitting shape for a poem about a closed, limited quantity of time. Each stanza does one job: the first looks at the tree, the second counts the years, and the third resolves to come back. A classical scholar who could have written anything chose the simplest music available, because a young man doing sums about his own death should not sound ornate.

Notable Lines

Two lines carry the poem.

It only leaves me fifty more.

Line 8

Flat accountancy, and dropped into a lyric about cherry blossom, it becomes the most honest line in the poem.

To see the cherry hung with snow.

Line 12

One swapped noun, and spring and winter stand in the same place.

Themes

Three ideas run through the poem.

Mortality. Even at 20, life is a fixed sum, and the speaker can already see its end.

Beauty in nature. The cherry in bloom is worth every remaining spring, and seeing it is the best use of time.

Carpe diem. The poem’s version of “seize the day” is simple: pay attention while you can.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now”.

What is “Loveliest of Trees” about?

It is about a 20-year-old who sees a cherry tree in blossom at Easter, calculates that he has only 50 springs left in a 70-year life, and decides to spend them looking at the cherry as often as he can. It is a short poem about beauty, time, and mortality.

How old is the speaker in “Loveliest of Trees”?

The speaker is 20. He counts on the biblical life span of “threescore years and ten,” or 70 years, says that “Twenty will not come again,” and concludes that 50 springs are left.

What does “threescore years and ten” mean?

It means 70 years. A score is 20, so threescore is 60, plus 10. The phrase comes from Psalm 90 in the King James Bible, where it describes the normal length of a human life.

What does “hung with snow” mean at the end?

On the surface, it describes the white cherry blossom, which looks like snow on the branches. The word also brings winter into the spring scene, a quiet reminder of age and death at the end of a poem about how little time is left.

Where does “Loveliest of Trees” come from?

It is poem II of A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, a sequence of 63 poems that Housman published at his own expense in 1896. It later became one of the most popular books of English poetry.

Glossary

A few words do more work than they seem to.

  • ride (line 3): A track or cleared path through a wood, made for riding or walking.
  • Eastertide (line 4): The Easter season, in spring.
  • threescore years and ten (line 5): Seventy years, the life span given in Psalm 90.
  • score (line 7): Twenty. “Take from seventy springs a score” means subtract twenty.
  • little room (line 10): Not much space, here meaning not much time.

The poem has been set to music many times.

The best-known setting is by the English composer George Butterworth, whose song cycle Six Songs from “A Shropshire Lad” (1911) opens with “Loveliest of Trees.” Butterworth was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and the cycle is often heard as a memorial to the young men of his generation.

If this poem speaks to you, these make good companions.

a e housmancarpe diemenglishlyricmortalitynaturevictorian

By , Editor · Last updated September 2026