Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now, or simply, Loveliest of Trees, was published in Housman’s collection of 63 poems in A Shropshire Lad (1896). Housman self-published the book after being turned down by several publishers. Themes tend to focus on unrequited love, pastoral beauty, fleeting youth, grief, death, and patriotism. Loveliest of Trees is often assigned reading in high school.
An illustration for the story A Shropshire Lad – II – Loveliest of Trees by the author A. E. Housman
Van Gogh, B. Chender Obstgarten
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.
