Why to take a vacation day in spring
It's not the evocation of spring that moves me in this poem, it's the awareness of how finite time is. Especially when I realize that I probably have fewer springs left on earth than Housman's narrator.
Stop. Turn off the computer. Cancel the meeting. Go outdoors and breathe the blossoms, whether they're cherry or not.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
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.
A.E. Housman
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