Birches By Robert Frost

Birches When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm (Now am I free to be poetical?) I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows-- Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 1. The meaning of “not launching out to soon” is that you shouldn’t try to grow up too soon and that you shouldn’t leave too soon because then you’ll be jumping into things too quickly. “Not carrying the tree,” means not to bring everything with you on your journey so you will be open to new experiences. “Clear to the ground” means that the ground is where you should have let the tree go and that is the point where you should be free and open. “Keeping one’s “poise” means he always did the appropriate things at the appropriate time. He never was rude and obscene. “Climbing carefully” means that you should be cautious on your way to make sure that every step you take is the proper one because one wrong move can send you plummeting to the ground and you will have to start over again. Frost’s comparisons with the filling of the cup is like climbing the tree because you must be careful to fill the cup enough but be cautious of overfilling it and spilling. While in the tree, you must be willing to take risks but you also must understand your limits. The fact that he was so descript and used one metaphor to explain the tree/life concept, really made that part of the poem meaningful. 2. Metaphors: a. Climbing a tree to living life. b. The trees being so bent after all of the swinging that it looks like little girls on their hands and knees that throw their hair. c. Life is like a pathless wood. Onomatopoeia: “As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.” 3. The two strong similes are of how climbing a tree is living life and how life is like a pathless wood. 4. Walt Whitman writes in free verse and has very flowing and contrasting rhythms compared to Frosts’. Frost’s writings do have a structure to it and is more rigid compared to Whitman’s.