"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now" by A.E. Housman

By A.E. Housman

Publication date: 1896

About the author:

• Born: March 26, 1859 in Fockbury, Worcestorshire, England.

• Housman was an English poet and scholor.

• He wrote two poetry volumes.

Theme 1

(quotes cited by line number)

Various Themes

/Central Ideas

"It only leaves me fifty more." (Housman 8).

1) Experience as much as possible while there is still time to do so.

• Identifies that he has little time left.

• The speaker has feelings of disappointment.

2) Time waits for nobody.

3) Death is inevitable.

Theme 3

"It only leaves me fifty more." (Housman 8).

Theme 2

• The speaker knows he will not live forever.

"Twenty will not come again," (Housman 6).

• It is guaranteed he will see as many springs as possible.

• Live in the moment.

• Time goes quickly.

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now"

Presented by: Vivian Victor

10/5/16

• I used text evidence from the poem in many of my slides.

• I recoreded myself speaking with an audio recorder on Capture Cast. I also used Capture Cast to record my screen during the presentation.

• I gathered my images from Google images.

Imagery

"Twenty will not come again," (Housman 6).

"To see the cherry hung with snow." (Housman 12).

"Is hung with bloom along the bough," (Housman 2).

"And stands about the woodland ride" (Housman 3).

• Images of springtime

• Imagines he will reach the elderly age of seventy.

Types of Imagery:

• Sight-

trees blossoming, wearing white, and woodland

• Scent-

cherry blossom trees and woodland

• Touch-

snow and the cold, or warm and spring

Literary Terms

Point of view:

• First-person

"About the woodlands I will go" (Housman 11).

Tone:

"And since to look at things in bloom" (Housman 9).

• The speaker wants to carry on and not dwell on the shortness life.

Connotation:

"...bloom..." (Housman 2).

• People always picture cherry trees as they are in bloom, never when it is winter and they have not blossomed.

Figurative Language Continued...

Elements of Figurative Language

Allusion:

Personification:

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now..." 'is' "Wearing white for Eastertide." (Housman 1 and 4).

"...Eastertide." (Housman 4).

• The cherry is somehow being apart of the welcoming of spring by "wearing" in white.

• Eastertide is known as the time of Easter. And the term "Easter" used in the Bible.

Symbolism:

Hyperbole:

"Wearing white for Eastertide." (Housman 4).

• White symbolizes that spring time is coming or has already begun.

"Fifty springs are little room," (Housman 10).

• Eastertide symbolizes Easter Sunday and the seven weeks that follow it.

"Now, of my threescore years and ten," (Housman 5).

• The speaker exaggerates that fifty springs (which is equivalent to fifty years) is "little room" or little time.

• "threescore" is another way of saying sixty.

Rhyme Scheme:

Alliteration:

"And take from seventy springs a score,"(Housman 7).

• AABB CCDD EEFF

• The speaker understands he will only have seventy springs in a lifetime and he has already lived through twenty of them.