Here’s poem XXXIX from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896):

’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town
    The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
    Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer’s time
    Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
    The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
    Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
    That will not shower on me.

Most of this is straightforward: the speaker remembers the spring flowers of their native Shropshire, the golden flowers of common broom and the white flowers of the hawthorn or May-tree. But what does the speaker mean by “wear the broom and climb the hedgerows”? In the case of “wear the broom” I can guess that it means wearing a sprig of broom-flower in a button-hole, but was this ever a custom? If it was, it’s not recorded in Maude Grieve’s A Modern Herbal or Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica. In the case of “climb the hedgerows” however I am baffled—this would be a very painful activity as the May-tree is well-supplied with thorns. I suppose that other kinds of hedgerows might be climbed, but then how would they be “heaped with may”?

Update Peter Shor suggests in comments that “climb the hedgerows” might mean “climb alongside the hedgerows” which would at least make sense, but is there such a sense of “climb”? In the OED I find sense “2.b. To reach or attain (a point) by this action” (that is, by climbing) which might work, though it would be nice to see another use by Housman of this sense of the word.

Here’s poem XXXIX from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896):

’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town
    The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
    Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer’s time
    Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
    The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
    Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
    That will not shower on me.

Most of this is straightforward: the speaker remembers the spring flowers of their native Shropshire, the golden flowers of common broom and the white flowers of the hawthorn or May-tree. But what does the speaker mean by “wear the broom and climb the hedgerows”? In the case of “wear the broom” I can guess that it means wearing a sprig of broom-flower in a button-hole, but was this ever a custom? If it was, it’s not recorded in Maude Grieve’s A Modern Herbal or Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica. In the case of “climb the hedgerows” however I am baffled—this would be a very painful activity as the May-tree is well-supplied with thorns. I suppose that other kinds of hedgerows might be climbed, but then how would they be “heaped with may”?

Update Peter Shor suggests in comments that “climb the hedgerows” might mean “climb alongside the hedgerows” which would at least make sense, but is there such a sense of “climb”? In the OED I find sense “2.b. To reach or attain (a point) by this action” (that is, by climbing) which might work, though it would be nice to see another use by Housman of this sense of the word. Or maybe this is a figure of synecdoche, the hedgerows standing for the hills.

Here’s poem XXXIX from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896):

’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town
    The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
    Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer’s time
    Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
    The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
    Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
    That will not shower on me.

Most of this is straightforward: the speaker remembers the spring flowers of their native Shropshire, the golden flowers of common broom and the white flowers of the hawthorn or May-tree. But what does the speaker mean by “wear the broom and climb the hedgerows”? In the case of “wear the broom” I can guess that it means wearing a sprig of broom-flower in a button-hole, but was this ever a custom? If it was, it’s not recorded in Maude Grieve’s A Modern Herbal or Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica. In the case of “climb the hedgerows” however I am baffled—this would be a very painful activity as the May-tree is well-supplied with thorns. I suppose that other kinds of hedgerows might be climbed, but then how would they be “heaped with may”?

Here’s poem XXXIX from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad (1896):

’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town
    The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
    Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer’s time
    Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
    The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
    Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
    That will not shower on me.

Most of this is straightforward: the speaker remembers the spring flowers of their native Shropshire, the golden flowers of common broom and the white flowers of the hawthorn or May-tree. But what does the speaker mean by “wear the broom and climb the hedgerows”? In the case of “wear the broom” I can guess that it means wearing a sprig of broom-flower in a button-hole, but was this ever a custom? If it was, it’s not recorded in Maude Grieve’s A Modern Herbal or Richard Mabey’s Flora Britannica. In the case of “climb the hedgerows” however I am baffled—this would be a very painful activity as the May-tree is well-supplied with thorns. I suppose that other kinds of hedgerows might be climbed, but then how would they be “heaped with may”?

Update Peter Shor suggests in comments that “climb the hedgerows” might mean “climb alongside the hedgerows” which would at least make sense, but is there such a sense of “climb”? In the OED I find sense “2.b. To reach or attain (a point) by this action” (that is, by climbing) which might work, though it would be nice to see another use by Housman of this sense of the word.