Fifty springs are little room

This afternoon it was sunny, and I went out to look at the crocuses near the back of St John’s and Trinity colleges. They’re roughly here on a map. Every spring I wait for them to magically appear, the first magnificent sweep of flowers, they make the eyes glow to stare at them. Today there was even a bee happily buzzing between them, as if in a childrens’ book. You can kneel down and peer, but no amount of biology will resolve the flowers’ mystery.

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 leaves me only fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
Above the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A E Houseman

So, that time is here. Make a break today to find some flowers near you.

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