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LOVELIEST OF TREES THEME
OF MAN AND THE NATURAL
WORLD
It's hard not to think of the speaker of "Loveliest of Trees" as one of those guys on the
Discovery Channel, showing you all the cool things the natural world has to offer
...
Now, even though looking at cherry trees is a metaphor for making the most out of
life, the speaker also does believe that those trees are the "loveliest" there is, worth
experiencing in all of their glory
...

While the speaker may be exaggerating a bit when he says that 50 years isn't enough
time to do all the exploring he wants, his point is clear: the natural world is a rich,
inexhaustible source of beauty and delight
...
The London
firm of Kegan Paul, Trench, Treubner & Company published it in 1896 as the second poem in A
Shropshire Lad, a collection of sixty-three of Housman's poems
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You will not live forever
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For example,
if it is winter, do not sit indoors to await the springtime blooming of the loveliest of trees, the cherry
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...
He wrote, "Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
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" Over the centuries, the wordscarpe diem,
or seize the day, gained widespread currency among poets and other writers as a term for urging readers
to make the most of present opportunities
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Implicit in the poem's meaning is that spring and its warm-weather cousin, summer, hold no
monopoly on beauty
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In the winter, the landscape is a work of art, with pendent
icicles, frosted meadows, or drifting snow
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One may interpret the cherry tree as a metaphor for children
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In this interpretation,
summer represents young adulthood; autumn, middle age; and winter; old age and death
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Meter

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In this format, each line
has four pairs of syllables, the first syllable of each pair unstressed and the second stressed, as in lines 2
and 3:

...
2
...
4
Is HUNG
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a LONG
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1
...
3
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a BOUT
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land RIDE
Several tetrameter lines in the poem place stress on the first syllable and thus are in trochaic tetrameter
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...
2
...
4
WEAR ing
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EAST er
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The literary term used to identify such a
foot is catalexis, and the foot is called a catalectic foot
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1
...
3
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SPRINGS is
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ROOM

End Rhyme

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Two
successive rhyming lines make up what is called a couplet
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On a ride through the woods after Easter Sunday, the speaker observes a cherry tree with its white
blossoms
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A halfcentury is not really a long time, he says
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...



...
E
...

Now of my three score years and ten,2
twenty will not come again
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And since to look at things in bloom,3
Fifty Springs is little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow
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woodland ride: The speaker is in a carriage or on horseback
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three
...
After the publication of the Bible in English, the
phrasethreescore years and ten gained widespread use in literary works and ordinary conversation in references to
the expected life span of a man
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things in bloom: The speaker apparently plans to observe more than cherry trees
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(See Themes, Beauty in People
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Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem
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bloom along the bough
Lines 3-4:
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years and ten, / twenty will not
Line 7:
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only leaves me fifty
Line 9:
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woodlands I will go
Line 12:
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Fifty Springs is little room

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Metaphor/Personification
Lines 1, 2, 4: The cherry
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wearing white for Eastertide
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Comparison of the tree to a person who has chosen to wear white for the Easter season

Study Questions and Writing Topics
1
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Imitate the rhyme scheme in "Loveliest of
Trees
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Is the speaker correct to associate the color of cherry blossoms with Eastertide? Explain your answer
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The speaker says he expects to live to age seventy
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Write an essay explaining the theme of carpe diem for an audience of your peers
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Besides "Loveliest of Trees," poems that center on carpe diem include "To the Virgins, to
Make Much of Time"; "Go, Lovely Rose"; and "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
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Enotes
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The first stanza is a straightforward description of the cherry tree in all its
spring-time magnificence, which the poet sees in the wood
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In the second stanza, the mood changes and the focus shifts from the tree to
the poet himself, as he falls to musing on the inevitability of death
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So again there are religious
overtones here, although now tinged with melancholy at the thought of death,
and, significantly, despite the religious references, the poet does not seem to
particularly believe in life after death
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The final stanza expresses the poet's feeling that fifty more years are still
much too few to appreciate the beauties of nature
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The use of the word
'snow' at the very end of the poem is particularly effective; it refers literally to
winter conditions, but also harks back to the first stanza, when the tree was
'hung in bloom'
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In spring the tree is clothed in
the white of bloom, in winter in the white of snow
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But the poet does not despair
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The theme of the poem is the idea that time is fleeting and one must take as
much opportunity as possible to enjoy what is present in one's lifetime
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The second stanza indicates that time is fleeting, and the time to enjoy
the blossoming will only happen one more time each year for the rest of his
life, which he estimates at fifty more years
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" The poem does stress the theme of appreciation of nature and of
life in its natural beauty
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The speaker suggests that by seeing the tree in the
winter, he will be able to experience it more than simply one time in the
year
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This is why
the moments and experiences that are joyous in one instant can also possess
beauty when we partake in them as often as possible
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oetic Structure
Length- Twelve short stanzas, composed of two couplets each, represents brevity of life
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Literary Devices
:
imagery
extended metaphor
personification
alliteration
Core: Theme
Carpe Diem:
Tone Devices
Contrasting Diction
:
Juxtaposes pessimistic diction with optimistic to establish a regretful and revitalized tone
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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
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Seed:
"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"
by A
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Housman
-Thoughts on the poem?
Live in the moment!!!!!!!!!!
Do not live in regret
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2
...
Poetic Structure
:
length
parallel
Literary Devices
Imagery
: Images of spring
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Extended metaphor
: nature is a metaphor for life/the cherry tree is the loveliest of trees/speaker is saying he is going to enjoy
the loveliest of things in life
Personification
: In line 4/the cherry tree is “wearing white for Eastertide
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It emphasizes the brevity of life, “seventy springs a score”, speaker realizing the limited
amount of time he has on earth
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Rhyme Scheme
- AABB CCDD EEFF, upbeat, lyrical, short couplets, emphasizes joyful experiences life can bring and
brevity of life’s cherished moments
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4 Stages of Life-Poem consisted of three equal quatrains, first birth, second adulthood, and third elderly
hood
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Each stanza ends in period, suggesting finality, once stage of life is over person cannot go back
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The poem forces the reader to realize the fleeting
nature of life and that the true path to happiness resides in the ideal of a spontaneous life, not to live
in a state of constant regret

...
E
...
The speaker’s didactic tone, coupled
with praiseworthy diction emphasizes spring as a metaphor to illuminate the poem’s carpe diem moral

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