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A Poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936) A Study Guide |
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Study Guide Prepared by Michael J. Cummings...© 2010 Type of Work and Publication Background ......."Loveliest of Trees" is a lyric poem focusing on appreciating the beauty of nature year-round. The London firm of Kegan Paul, Trench, Treubner & Company published it in 1896 as the second poem in A Shropshire Lad, a collection of sixty-three of Housman's poems. Do It Now .......You
will not live forever. Therefore, make the most of the opportunities of
the moment. For example, if it is winter, do not sit indoors to await the
springtime blooming of the loveliest of trees, the cherry. Instead, seize
the opportunity to view the trees now, when the trees blossom with snow.
Warm Up to Winter .......Implicit in the poem's meaning is that spring and its warm-weather cousin, summer, hold no monopoly on beauty. In the fall, fields and forests blazon with color--the red of the apple, the orange of the pumpkin, and the russet or gold of the leaf. In the winter, the landscape is a work of art, with pendent icicles, frosted meadows, or drifting snow. See the Beauty in People .......One may interpret the cherry tree as a metaphor for children. In their innocence and purity, they are like the white cherry blossoms, and are always delightful to observe and be around. In this interpretation, summer represents young adulthood; autumn, middle age; and winter; old age and death. Each age has its beauty--even old age, when the soul shines through the eyes with the wisdom of accumulated experience. .......The meter in the poem varies, but most of the lines are in iambic tetrameter. In this format, each line has four pairs of syllables, the first syllable of each pair unstressed and the second stressed, as in lines 2 and 3: ......1....................2.................3...................4Several tetrameter lines in the poem place stress on the first syllable and thus are in trochaic tetrameter. Line 4 is an example. ......1..................2.................3.............4You probably noticed that the fourth foot has only one syllable. The literary term used to identify such a foot is catalexis, and the foot is called a catalectic foot. Another example of trochaic tetrameter with a catalectic foot is line 6: ....1.................2................3............4End Rhyme .......In each stanza the first line rhymes with the second, and the third line rhymes with the fourth. Two successive rhyming lines make up what is called a couplet. .......On
a ride through the woods after Easter Sunday, the speaker observes a cherry
tree with its white blossoms. Noting that he is twenty years old, he estimates
that about fifty years of his life remain. A half-century is not really
a long time, he says. Consequently, he will make the most of the rest of
his life, he says, by observing the cherry tree in winter--when snow clings
to its boughs--as well as spring.
Figures of Speech .......Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem. Alliteration Line 2:.......bloom along the boughSynecdoche Line 6:.....Fifty Springs is little roomMetaphor/Personification Lines 1, 2, 4: The cherry . . . is . . . wearing white for Eastertide.Study Questions and Writing Topics 1. Write a short poem centering
on the beauty of nature. Imitate the rhyme scheme in "Loveliest of Trees."
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