Loveliest of trees

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.

That's what AE Houseman thought. I feel the same (although these days I'm rather hoping that fifty is the new twenty). I read this poem to my father not long before he died - and those words remained clear in his head when much else was not.

This cherry tree is in the St Mary's churchyard, Bungay, which also houses the ruins of a priory. It looked beautiful today in the watery April sunlight