[New-Poetry] Alexander's text

[Bob Grumman]

Skip Fox wrote:
>
>  
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> Loveliest of Trees
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>  
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> Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
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> Is hung with bloom upon the bough,
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> And stands about the woodland ride
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> Wearing white for Eastertide.
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> *Now of my threescore years and ten*
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> *            Twenty will not come again,*
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> *And take from seventy springs a score*
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> *It only leaves me fifty more.*
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> And since to look at things in bloom
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> Fifty springs are little room,
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> About the woodland I will go
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> To see the cherry hung with snow.
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>                                     --A.E. Houseman
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>  Bob,
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>  
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> I know its not profoundly mathematical (like calculating the square 
> root of minus impossible one, or delineating the differentials between 
> the definite and the indefinite, like you mathematical types are 
> always up to), but it does its ciphering, as they say. J
>
>  
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> skip
>
Harumpf.  My taxonomy would scorn it as not doing math to poetic 
effect.  That the persona only has fifty years to enjoy cherry blossoms 
is important to the poetic effect but not that 70 minus 20 is 50!  And 
Houseman doesn't express his subtraction mathematically.  One of my 
favorite poems, though.

--Bob
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