Alfred Edward Housman

Alfred Edward Housman, better known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and
poet regarded as one of the greatest scholars of all time and one of the foremost classicists of his
age. His poems were marked by a romantic pessimism which he expressed in a simple and lucid
style. His best known work is the cycle of poems ‘A Shropshire Lad’ which reflected his deep
pessimism and obsession with death. His pessimism is often attributed to the untimely death of his
mother when he was just 12. Another reason for the sadness and loneliness in his life was the fact
that he was homosexual and deeply in love with a man who could not reciprocate his feelings. He
attended the Oxford University to study classics but could not pass his examination owing to the
constant emotional turmoil he found himself in. Nevertheless, he continued studying classical texts
in Latin privately and wrote articles for journals. His mastery of the language despite not having a
university degree led to his appointment as a Professor of Latin at the University College London.
Although famous as a poet, he considered himself to be a Classicist, a Latinist, and regarded poetry
as a secondary activity.

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 Loveliest of Trees, the cherry now

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.

Summary:

The poem details the speaker’s age, the fact that he loves looking at nature, and the
unavoidable truth of human existence. Time is limited, therefore, the speaker declares, he needs to
spend all the time he can while he’s still alive looking at these trees he loves. The tree is
a symbol for the wider natural world and all beautiful, fulfilling things. The moral of the story is
that one should not waste his life on things that do not please him.

Meaning

The title of the poem, ‘Loveliest of Trees’ refers to the cherry trees that appear to the speaker
as the most pleasant to look at. When cherry blossoms, it makes the speaker think about how short
his life is to enjoy such scenic beauty. Often when he passes through the woodland in spring, the
flower reminds him how much time he has to capture this momentary beauty of nature. According
to him, life is too short to drink beauty to the lees. With this monotonous idea, he moves on and
waits to see the cherry blossoms hung with the metaphorical “snow”.

The general meaning

The poem centers upon the matchless beauty of the cherry trees. The writer begins
describing the cherries hanging along the boughs. They beautifully stand in the middle of the
woodland and, to him, their white color reminds him of Easter Sunday, or the day Jesus was
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resurrected. Enthralled by the bounty of nature, he starts thinking about his mortality, believing he
is only going to live for seventy years. At twenty, he realizes that twenty years of his life are gone
without enjoying the bliss of nature and he has fifty years left. He realizes that fifty years are not
enough to adore the glories of Cherry trees. Hence, he decides to enjoy the beauty of the natural
world as long as he can.

The Analysis:

In the first stanza of ‘Loveliest of Trees,’ the speaker begins by making use of the phrase
that later came to be used as the title. He describes throughout the first lines that it is his goal to
appreciate the “Loveliest of trees,” the cherry blossom, while he can. The speaker can see the tree in
his mind’s eye as being “hung” and heavy with “bloom along the bough”. The first rhyme in the
first two lines, as well as the use of alliteration, help create an idealized image of the tree. It is
“Wearing white for Eastertide,” a reference to the color of the cherry blossom’s blooms and the
springtime season it blooms in. The tree is on a “woodland ride,” or a path meant for a horse.

He knows that his time on earth is limited, as seen through the use of numbers and reference
to the biblical lifespan in this stanza. The speaker says that “Twenty” of his years will not “come
again”. He’s twenty years old and knows that he only has “threescore years and ten” left to live. The
reference to seventy years of life is brought back up in the seventh line. It comes from the Bible and
the statement that seventy years is an average person’s lifespan. This poem is both a reminder to
live one’s life to the fullest while also a reminder that death will come no matter what one does.

As a twenty-year-old man, he knows that he only has “fifty more” springs to appreciate the
beauty of the cherry blossom trees. That, he states, is not enough time to truly appreciate “things in
bloom”. So, he determines, that is enough talk. Now it is time for action. He’s going to the
“woodlands” to “see the cherry hung with snow”. The freshness of this scene is temporary. The
whiteness of the blossoms is something he’s only going to see a limited number of times.

The main themes

Transience of life, pastoral beauty, death and fleeting nature of time are the major themes of this
poem

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