Crab Apple

Spring is in the air (in Australia that is)… turning to A. E. Housman …

from The Shropshire Lad (II)

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 litmitle room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A. E. Housman (1859 – 1936)

As ‘twenty will not come again’ AEH is considering the brevity of life at an early age … so he decides to make the most of the moment … appreciation of where he is … the beauty of spring blossom in Shropshire, England … good philosophy, and independent of age to make the most of the moment …

A different second stanza …

I’ve used my three score years and ten
only a few will come again
so in every possible way
I make the most of every day!

Another ‘carpe diem’ (seize the day) poem springs to mind …

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674)

The Latin phrase carpe diem actually originated in the ‘odes’… poems composed by the Roman poet Horace … see https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/carpe-diem-poems-making-most-time