Hedgerows

We didn't discuss Thom Gunn's "A Sketch of the Great Dejection," a pity since it's cardinal to the collection. And I wondered how others understood its beginning "Having read the promise of the hedgerow / the body set out anew on its adventures." What on earth is the promise of the hedgerow? At first I thought he might as well have been speaking of hedgehogs! The persona persists through his slough of despond having been promised love and imagination … from the hedgerow, or at least, at the hedgerow, as a starting point. I wonder if we're to recall those lines from Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"

                                                Once again I see
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild:

"sportive" and "running wild" certainly seem appropriate for our adorer of "the risk that made robust."