A bliss of cherry blossoms

Every spring I wait eagerly for the pink double cherry blossoms to burst into bloom outside my kitchen window. Since we live in a stacked townhome, I look out at branch level and feel like pink clouds have overtaken the sky. This year's early spring and then a not-too-surprising cold dip made me fear that the blossoms had frozen, but they tenaciously appeared.

Here's a poem by A.E. Housman, who had a similar love for the beauty of the cherry (although his blossoms were white, not pink.) The poem is one of 63 poems from a work entitled Shropshire Lad. Housman's work was infused by the brevity of youth  and the tenor of this poem reminds me of the famous opening lines from  Robert Herrick's poem  To the Virgins to make most of time. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," Herrick admonishes the young women, "Old time is still a-flying".

I hope you have a chance to get out this weekend and enjoy the loveliness of spring while it stil lingers.

from A Shropshire Lad
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.