For me, this sweet poem is fragrant with Spring. It reminds us all to take time to enjoy the beauty all around us and to store it forever in our hearts. I’m so happy to share it with you:
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 leaves me only 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. Houseman, from A Shropshire Lad
My oldest daughter, Martha Cameron, an archaeologist, lives in Shropshire, the setting for this poem, still a rural, agricultural county with sheep on the hillsides. The Severn River, with its wild swans, is a short walk away. There’s an ancient Roman road in the field below Cameron’s house. The Blue Hills of Wales are visible from her kitchen window. I’ve loved my visits there.
Hi Martha,
Thanks so much for sharing your lovely memories of the place
that inspired this poem! I cherish a paperback copy of “A
Shropshire Lad” given to me by a teacher in sixth grade
because she knew I was a poetry lover and wrote poetry.
How wonderful it would be to see the site of this poem!
Write on,
Karin
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