The poem actually offers a problem of the human condition and then suggests, at least, a partial solution: the problem is that our lives are short, and opportunities for enjoying beauty are limited. But by realizing that beauty can be found in unlikely places, we can increase those opportunities. In the poem, if we interpret "snow" literally, the speaker then doubles his opportunities for experiencing beauty.
Perrine's central argument involves the use of the word "now":
The first now places the speaker's observation in spring, but his claim that the cherry is loveliest in spring does not preclude the speaker's making a decision to return to see the cherry in winter. The second "now" at the beginning of the second stanza is not an adverb, but an expletive, thus set off by the comma. This use of "now" is like, "Now, wait a minute!" or "Now, how can that be?" This use of now does not signal time, and that is the same expletory use of now that Housman's speaker employs in the second stanza.
Nothing in the poem indicates a switch in the poet's thought from spring to another season. In fact, the word "Now" is so heavily emphasized in the pattern of the poem as quite effectively to contain it in the spring. In line 1 "now" is emphasized by its receiving a metrical stress, by its final position in the line, and by its being a rhyme word. At the beginning of stanza 2 the word is repeated, receiving heavy emphasis this time from its initial position (in the line, in the sentence, in the stanza), from the isolating comma that follows it, and from the fact that the metrical pattern has been displaced in order to give it a metrical stress (trochee replaces the expected iamb). The first two lines of the third stanza continue to refer to the time of "things in bloom." With the "Now" of Eastertide thus strongly exerting its pressure on the last two lines, the time-reference cannot possibly shift without a clear rhetorical signal (e.g. "And since to look at things in bloom, Fifty spring are little room, In winter to the woods I'll go To see the cherry hung with snow"). But no such signal is given: there is no "Then" to set against the twice iterated "Now," no "winter" to set against the twice iterated "spring." The reader therefore carries (or should carry) the "Now" of the first ten lines uninterrupted to the end of the poem. (26-27)
Perrine writes, "The first two lines of the third stanza continue to refer to the time of 'things in bloom'" (26). However, the adverbial conjunction "since" does not indicate time here but cause; "because fifty springs are not much time to look at things in bloom" demonstrates the meaning of "since" here, and "things in bloom" takes on a symbolic stature representing "beauty," not merely limited to cherry blooms.
When Perrine offers a rendering that would supposedly make the literal snow feasible, he violates the economics of poetry: "In winter to the woods I'll go / To see the cherry hung with snow" (26-27). And because the speaker is obviously already out looking at the blossoms at the beginning of the poem, he would be merely repeating himself if he said in the last line that he was going to go look at them, and that would also violate the economics of poetry.
Actually, there are two rhetorical signals for future: "I will" and "snow."
Perrine's final supporting materials consist of outside evidence that Housman used the word "snow" metaphorically in another poem to refer to blooms, but the poet's using snow metaphorically in one poem does not categorically preclude his using it literally in another. Finally, he refers readers to "Tom Burns Haber's The Making of A Shropshire Lad . . . which shows that Housman originally considered 'snow' as an alternative for 'white' in the first stanza" (27).
But what would motivate the change from "snow" to "white," if by both terms, he meant "blossoms"?
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodlands wide
Wearing snow for Eastertide.
And since to look at things you love
Fifty times is not enough,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow. (qtd in Haber 35)
Because Housman used the final "snow" literally, the reader might construe the first use of snow to be literal also. But this reading would obscure the purpose of snow in the last line; therefore, in the first stanza he changed his use of metaphorical snow to "white" so that the literal snow in the last stanza would clearly denote the solution to the problem: doubling his number of occasions to enjoy the white beauty of the cherry.
Works Cited
Haber, Tom Burns. The Making of A Shropshire Lad: A Manuscript Variorum. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1966.
Housman, A. E. "Loveliest of trees" II. A Shropshire Lad. Boston: Colonial P, 1919. 12.
Perrine, Laurence. "Housman's Snow: Literal or Metaphorical?" CEA Critic. 35 (1972): 26-27.