About the woodlands I will go

Today is the birthday of the poet and classical scholar 

A.E. (Alfred Edward) Housman, 

born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England (1859). 

He only published two books of poetry during his lifetime, 

but one of those was the 63-poem cycle A Shropshire Lad (1896). 

A Shropshire Lad  2: Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

BY A. E. HOUSMAN

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.