more deep explanation (it is very difficult poem to me)

In The Loveliest of Trees, the speaker discovers human mortality, fading youth, and therefore moves from innocence to knowledge. 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. In the first stanza the speaker describes the cherry tree as “Wearing white for Eastertide.” White is the ritual color for Easter, and thus the tree and it’s blossoms represent the rebirth of Christ along with the rebirth of the year. In this stanza, the speaker appears innocent and optimistic. He does not posses the realization that he is mortal. However, the rebirth is contrasted by the awareness that the blossoms of cherry trees may be beautiful, but they are fragile and short-lived, just as his life is (Leggett 47). The understanding of his mortality leads the speaker from his innocence to knowledge. In the second stanza the speaker grasps the concept that he will die and in actuality his life is very short. He begins to calculate his age and how much time he has before he dies. He explains how he will live “threescore years and ten” which is seventy years. He then subtracts twenty years from the threescore which makes him twenty years of age. He comes to the conclusion that he only has fifty more springs to live (Discovering Authors 3). B.J. Legett states “In the last stanza ‘Things in Bloom’ now suggest something of the vitality of life which has become more precious. The limitation of life is carried by the understatement of ‘little room’ (Discovering Authors 3).” His vision of a springtime world of rebirth is altered by his sudden sense of his own transience, so he can only see the cherry as “hung with snow,” an obvious suggestion of death (Hoagwood 31). The view of the poem is shifted from a world of spring and rebirth to one of winter and death. Terence Hoagwood claims: The connotations of Easter contradict the connotations of “snow”-the one implies rebirth, the other death. The fact that the liveliness of youth will not return contradicts the conventional content of the Easter symbolism ,and likewise the theme of the seasons (Hoagwood 49)

An except from
http://www.goldenessays.com/free_essays/2/english/A/alfred-housman.shtml

所有跟帖： 

• the poem sounds sad to me -englishreader- ♂ (0 bytes) () 10/31/2009 postreply 11:38:43

• 第三節，往rebirth有些牽強。用雪比喻櫻花的潔白很貼切。 -李唐- ♂ (0 bytes) () 11/02/2009 postreply 12:20:21