Gleaning Facebook: 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 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.

-A.E. Housman

Our native Black Cherry is a beautiful tree. I always enjoy watching it bloom. There are more showy trees. Its foreign and cultivated cousins are spectacular. Housman's poem makes a suitable anthem for nature lovers everywhere. The brevity of life and the glory of nature propel me often toward the woods.

Farmers are not lovers of cherry trees. The leaves of a cherry can make life briefer still for livestock -- they contain cyanide and can kill a hungry cow very quickly. 

Comment:

Tracy S. Lawler
I was first introduced to this stanza of the poem via the Baby Einstein videos that my kidlets have watched from birth...it was with a cherry tree in bloom photo, too! Beautiful.