Loveliest of trees (again)...

AE Housman has the last word on cherry blossom and I scorn the  literary cynics  who go 'Oh that poem.." in languid, dismissive voices, as if, because they have read it once, it no longer 'counts'!

Not one of them could pen a single word to match the glory of Housman's, and they know it, so they reduce themselves to sterile, reductionist critics. 

"Sing hey to you, good day to you, sing boo to you, pooh pooh to you" - that's what I say. Cherries are beautifully new to the world every year and every year we can marvel at them - and this poem - anew.


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.