The originality in this book consists not in the contrast between love
and the grave, but in the acute self-consciousness of youth, in the
pagan determination to enjoy nature without waiting till life's summer
is past.

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 only leaves me fifty more.

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

The death of the body is not the greatest tragedy in this volume, for
suicide, a thought that youth loves to play with, is twice glorified.
The death of love is often treated with an ironical bitterness that
makes one think of _Time's Laughingstocks_.

Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?