This final conclusion suggests that Housman’s poem is a carpe diem poem. The speaker realizes that his time on earth is limited and chooses to embrace life to its fullest rather than sink into despair. Like many other carpe diem poems, Housman’s narrator understands the brevity of his life through nature and the beauty of spring. However, Housman deviates from this common theme in his tone. While other carpe diem poems focus on images of winter, decay, and death, this poem focuses on the awesome beauty of these trees in this particular moment. In this way, it embodies the form in a new way: the speaker lingers on this exact moment instead of his eventual decay.
