Tag Archives: Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

By Robin Bates | Published: March 22, 2024

Few trees are more beautiful in blossom than the cherry, now in full flower in the National Arboretum. A.E. Housman knew this well.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. E. Housman, cherry trees | Comments closed

Dreaming of Travel during Covid

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2020

A very smart Covid poem circulating on social media at the moment references 11 poems, all about longing to travel.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Lake Isle of Innisfree", "Sea Fever", "Green Eye of the Yellow God", "Mandalay", "Milford Haven", "Rolling English Road", "Skye Boat Song", "Upon First reading Chapman's Homer", A. E. Housman, COVID-19, Crown, G.K. Chesterton, J. Milton Hayes, John Keats, John Masefield, Kenneth Grahame, Michael Drayton, Midsummer Night's Dream, Outlanders, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Henry Boulton, W. B. Yeats, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, wind in the willows | Comments closed

Celebrating the Sun

By Robin Bates | Published: June 20, 2019

Friday – Summer Solstice Cultures and civilizations since time immemorial have celebrated the summer solstice, with many magnificent works of architecture (including Stonehenge, the Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu, the Egyptian pyramids, the Mayans’ Chichen Itza, and Scotland’s Ring of Brodgar) constructed so as to mark the date. Spiritual author Starhawk discusses the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Sun", "When I Was One and Twenty", A. E. Housman, Andrew Marvell, summer, summer solstice, Time, To His Coy Mistress | Comments closed

A Light Exists in Spring

By Robin Bates | Published: March 20, 2019

Thursday – First Day of Spring I’ll let Emily Dickinson usher in the new season with “A Light exists in Spring.” I like how the poet describes this time of year as elusive, a sentiment found in a number of other magnificent spring poems, including A. E. Housman’s “Loveliest of Trees” and Robert Frost’s “Nothing […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Light Exists in Spring", "Nothing Gold Can Stay", "Spring", A. E. Housman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost | Comments closed

On Cherry Trees and Time Passing

By Robin Bates | Published: April 6, 2010

The ornamental cherry trees on St. Mary’s College campus are in full bloom at the moment. Few moments of the spring are more beautiful. I remember the shock a number of years ago when a beaver moved into the area and took them all down. The animal was deported, new trees were planted, and now […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. E. Housman, death and dying, Nature | Comments closed

Poetry vs. the Decline of Civilization

By Robin Bates | Published: August 19, 2009

I was listening to Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion this past weekend and marveling yet again at his ability to pull me into his stories about the Lake Woebegone citizenry. His account of a school field trip may have been a summer repeat—I’m not sure because I came into the program late. In any […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. E. Houseman, adolescence, Garrison Keillor, poetry | Comments closed