Loveliest of Trees

-- What do you notice? 

Some things we noticed: what the poem looks like on the page the story he is telling figurative language -- metaphor descriptive language emotions/mood

A. E. Housman (1859–1936).  A Shropshire Lad.  1896.

II. Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

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,         5 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,         10 About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.

couplets

iambic tetrameter


What is the mood?
What is the central idea or theme? 

Hear it read at -- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN5k9wauu94