Words by A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad II), tune traditional arranged and adapted by David A. Harley. It’s more or less the A tune from the reel ‘The Rose Tree’. At some point I’ll probably combine it with a version of the reel on mandola. Though since my fingers already exceed my three-score-and-ten, maybe not…
[A couple of alternative arrangements (demo only) added below.]
Taster for an album.
Backup:
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.
This is a version using the B-tune of ‘The Rose Tree’ for the second verse.
And this version uses the B-tune for the third verse instead.
David Harley
Wheal Alice Music 