Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by A. E. Hausman, Alfred Edward Hausman, who lived from 1859 to 1936. He was a classical

scholar and poet, and is probably best known for a cycle of poems called

a shropshire lad many of his poems are quite lyrical and he has many poems about springtime

so i thought i would share one of those on this week's on today's show rather today's poem is

called loveliest of trees this is how it goes Loveliest of Trees. This is how it goes.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bow, and stands about the

woodland ride wearing white for Eastertide. Now of my three score years in ten, twenty will not come again,

and take from seventy sprigs a score,

it only leaves me 50 more. And since to look at things in bloom, 50 springs are little room,

about the woodlands I will go to see the cherry hung with snow. This poem comes from a

shropshire lad, a one of Houseman's two collections, and it was the second poem in that collection.

And I read somewhere, maybe even on a blog or something like that, that this is kind of a Carpe Diem poem.

Of course, it's got so much in here about time, so many references to time. The 70 Springs, for example, which is what the average length of a man's life according to the Bible, something like that. And thus, even as it's a poem about new blossoms, about a tree with new beauty and new growth, about the passing away of the winter,

and moving into the flourishing of a lovely spring. Even with all that, and even with the playful

tone that the poem presents, it's still a poem about the limited amount of time that we are given here on earth.

It's a poem about the things that are worth paying attention to, the things that are worth beholding, the things that are worth spending our time with in the limited time that we do have.

I suppose for many of you, the idea of the cherry trees being in blossom or anything, being in

blossom is still a bit far off. It's still kind of a, just something you're looking forward to.

Here in North Carolina, off and on things are starting to bloom. In fact, I have a very, very young

cherry tree in our yard, and it's starting to show that new life just a little

bit. So this may be a poem that I should have saved for a month or so from now. But I think it's a

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