OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND POETRY

 

A few days ago, while gazing with pleasure at our weeping cherry tree, I found myself quietly reciting this poem by A.E. Housman:

 

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.

 

I must have been around twenty myself when I first encountered these lines, an age at which 50 years seemed an eternity, and I could no more imagine myself at 70 than I could imagine myself flying to the moon. Yet now, I find, to my astonishment, that I have not only reached 70, but have, in fact, outlived my threescore years and ten. 

 

And how is it that I remember Housman’s poem all these years later?  Well, in my youth, I would read favorites over and over again. I wasn’t trying to memorize them, but my brain was young and impressionable, and much of the poetry that I read decades ago remains fresh in my mind, even as I struggle to remember the plot of a book that I read last month. 

 

Today, as I sit pondering Housman’s poem and the years that have passed since I accidently learned it off by heart, I am happy to report that I am still enjoying things in bloom. And although I now spend hours, rather than whole days at a time, tending to my garden, we are old friends, this patch of ground and I, and it reliably delights me with daffodils, forget-me-nots, rhodies, lilacs, irises, roses, and much more each year. 

 

And so, with gratitude for whatever years I am given, I shall, with Housman, take the time to enjoy those blossoms that present themselves for my enchantment for as long as I am able.  

 

May we all do the same, whatever our age.