Sunday, April 3, 2011

Fifty springs are little room

Somewhere in the world, the cherry trees are blooming right now. I presume. Everywhere in America, it's National Poetry Month, and I had limited time last Monday when I set up blogs to post. I fell in love with this poem in high school when our men's chorus sang a choral setting of this poem:


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.

It was in the men's chorus that I really came to love singing, I think, though my college experience deepened that appreciation in very important ways. When I have more time to blog, maybe I'll talk more about that.

2 comments:

  1. Lovely poetry, John. Inspiration for my blog, too!

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  2. That's great, Paula!

    As it happens, I think we've seen a few cherry trees "hung with" snow out here in California. I'm afraid that when we return to Indiana tomorrow, we may see trees with ACTUAL snow.

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