Tuesday 25 March 2014

Go Down to Kew to see the cherry hung with snow


Throughout Kew, the streets and Kew Gardens, the cherry trees were in magnificent blossom when Grey Granite visited last week, bringing to mind verses from two poems,   'Go down to Kew in lilac time'  from ,'The Organ Grinder' by  Alfred Noyes, and A.E Housman's incomparable  'Loveliest of Trees the cherry now ...to see the cherry hung with snow'.  
Kew Gardens Station

Cherries by the lake in Kew Gardens


The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,
    The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)
And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world’s a blaze of sky     
    The cuckoo, though he’s very shy, will sing a song for London.

(Alfred Noyes, 'The Organ Grinder')

 
White cherry blossom in Kew Gardens
Bushwood Road Kew, lined with cherry and damson trees which will drop fruit for the taking on to the pavements later in the year


'Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough' Housman