Loveliest of trees

It really is Spring now and the cherry trees are proving it. And it’s possible to write about something delicate and beautiful and tender and to turn our eyes away from all the appalling things that are happening in our world. I don’t think any of us will ignore them – how could we? – but it’s comforting to look at things in bloom as A.E. Houseman knew very well all those years ago.

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.

A.E. Houseman

Such a gorgeous tree and even when November comes and it’s shedding it’s leaves, it’s beautiful and stunning and it lifts our spirits just to look at it.

CHERRY IN NOVEMBER

Gloriously, the lovely cherry
Warms our chilly autumn day,
Waving flags of celebration,
Gold in the November grey.

Shouts her challenge, loud and heady,
Down with death, with woes, with fears,
Till she stands bereft and slender
In a pool of golden tears.

She, who in the frost of Easter,
Wore a cap of fragile lace,
Soft and white and soon to tatter,
Absolutely out of place.

Singing to us in the garden,
Death is conquered. Do not fear.
Young and feminine and tender,
Love’s reminder every year.