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.

--A. E. Housman (1859-1936), British poet and professor

Dame Judi Dench recites this poem here:

Parta Quies

Good-night; ensured release,
Imperishable peace,
   Have these for yours,
While sea abides, and land,
And earth’s foundations stand,
   And heaven endures.

When earth’s foundations flee,
Nor sky nor land nor sea
   At all is found,
Content you, let them burn:
It is not your concern;
   Sleep on, sleep sound.

– A. E.  Housman (1859-1936), English Romantic poet and professor of Latin at Cambridge

Easter Hymn

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain, 
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain, 
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright 
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night 
The hate you died to quench and could but fan, 
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by, 
At the right hand of majesty on high You sit, 
and sitting so remember yet Your tears, 
your agony and bloody sweat, 
Your cross and passion and the life you gave, 
Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

--A. E Housman (1859-1935), English Classical scholar and poet

The Lent Lilly

‘Tis spring; come out to ramble
The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble

About the hollow ground
The primroses are found.
And there’s the windflower chilly
With all the winds at play,
And there’s the Lenten lily
That has not long to stay
And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying
You find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing
With every wind at will,
But not the daffodil,

Bring baskets now, and sally
Upon the spring’s array,
And bear from hill and valley
The daffodil away
That dies on Easter day.


-- A. E. Housman (1859-1936)