January 8 A E Housman

A SHROPSHIRE LAD

Finally this month let us get away from the snow, or almost, into the delights of blossom-time, for poetic imagination can take us both forward into pleasant weather, and back to youthful days. One of A.E.Housman’s Shropshire lads is speaking:

cherry snow photo
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.