Housman’s “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now” consists of three four-line stanzas with the rime scheme AABB CCDD EEFF. Although the poem’s theme can be understood as carpe diem, meaning that the speaker is urging himself to get out and enjoy the beauty of the cherry blossoms while he can, the poem actually goes beyond the limitation of the philosophy of merely “seizing the day.”
No matter how tightly one grasps or “seizes” the day, that day will still vanish, because one cannot add one hour to a day’s length of time. But this speaker reveals a way that he can actually double his enjoyment of beauty.
First Stanza
In the first stanza, the speaker describes a beautiful scene that he is obviously enjoying as he speaks. He is riding through a wooded area and observes that the beauty of the blossoms on the cherry trees makes them the “Loveliest of trees.” The time of the year is spring; the speaker says describing the blossoms that they are “Wearing white for Eastertide.”
Second Stanza
In the second stanza, the speaker reveals that he is twenty years old as he calculates, according to the biblical claim that a lifespan is “threescore years and ten,” that he has only fifty more years to enjoy such beauty in spring. The speaker’s emphasis throughout the poem is on the intensity of the beauty and brevity of the time he will have to enjoy that beauty.
Third Stanza
In the third stanza, the speaker claims that because fifty more opportunities to enjoy these lovely trees with their luscious blossoms is not enough, he will go observe the same trees also in winter, when they are “hung with snow.” That way the speaker doubles his opportunities to enjoy the cheery trees “wearing white.”
More than Carpe Diem
While a strict carpe diem reading is not impossible, it seems unlikely for two main reasons: First, the speaker is already out enjoying the blooms so he is already seizing the day. It makes little sense to implore someone to seize the day, while the person is, in fact, already in the process of seizing it.
Second, the speaker has made it clear that he thinks experiencing this beauty only fifty more times is not enough, “And since to look at things in bloom, / Fifty springs are little room.” If fifty springs are not enough, simply suggesting to himself that should get looking would not change that fact in the least, especially since he is in the process of looking already.
Snow is Literal not Metaphorical
The carpe diem reading results from interpreting “snow” in the last line to be a metaphor for the cherry blossoms. And while that interpretation is not impossible, the poem’s achievement is greater if “snow” is taken literally. Thus, the speaker solves a problem: instead of just having fifty more times to look at the cherry wearing white, he doubles his opportunities.
