"The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers / Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away"

[larryhammer]

Following up on Herrick's plant-based erotica, I should point out that in all fairness, he is quite capable of treating cherry blossoms without getting smutty -- and indeed can read from them a lesson quite consonant with classical Japanese aesthetics:

To Blossoms

Fair pledges of a fruitful tree,
  Why do ye fall so fast?
  Your date is not so past
But you may stay yet here awhile
  To blush and gently smile,
    And go at last.

What! were ye born to be
  An hour or half's delight,
  And so to bid good night?
'Twas pity Nature brought you forth
  Merely to show your worth
    And lose you quite.

But you are lovely leaves, where we
  May read how soon things have
  Their end, though ne'er so brave:
And after they have shown their pride
  Like you awhile, they glide
    Into the grave.

From whence it is but an short slouch to Housman, and one of his versified arithmetic lessons:

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.

Miles to go before our sleep, indeed. Or as Ki no Tomonori would have it:

    These cherries must bloom
with the same scent and color
    as in days gone by,
and indeed what changes is
people who age with the years.

---L.