Birches

“Birches” begins in the colloquial, blank verse voice common to Frost’s poetry. Establishing his speaker (who could be read as Frost himself) as meditative and reflective, Frost creates the driving metaphor of the poem, painting a clear, natural image of birch trees contextualized against different natural flora: “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” (Lines 1-3). The blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter of these lines, creates a rhythmic sense of a natural voice, creating an intimacy and natural connection with the speaker. In these first lines, the reader understands the meditative and nostalgic direction of the poem, as Frost sets up his speaker’s mental state as someone fondly imagining a childhood activity.

The speaker notes that these birches, while prompting the memory or suggestion of a boy swinging them, are likely bent by another, natural force. In contrast to the human activity, an ice-storm must have caused their shape. The speaker addresses the reader, saying “Often you must have seen them / Loaded with ice on a sunny winter morning / After a rain” (Lines 5-7). In addition to the inviting voice, the second-person address further creates intimacy with the reader and asks the reader to participate in the speaker’s meditation and musings. His mind wanders, making new associations with the ice-storm imagery, and he launches into a richly textured description of the icy birches: “They click upon themselves / As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored / As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel” (Lines 7-9). Frost’s language becomes dense with sound, creating echoes of the actual sounds the trees make.

The speaker furthers the image of ice-riddled trees, describing how they change with the onslaught of the sun: “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” (Lines 10-13). Frost introduces the notion of nature as an access point to heaven, or the divine, a theme he will return to at the end of the poem. Here, the imagery works to create a sense of awe in the reader, establishing the power and beauty of the natural world.

The beauty is, however, one that leaves a mark. Even though the birch trees do not break under the weight of the ice, “once they are bowed / So low for long, they never right themselves” (Lines 15-16). Frost introduces the idea of the world’s impact upon a being, a notion that prefigures his claim of weariness later in the poem. Despite the change in the birch trees, and the knowledge that they will never return to their previous state, the speaker finds beauty in their new form. He describes how the reader could encounter them years later in the woods, “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” (Lines 18-20). He creates a connection between humanity and nature, finding a casual kind of beauty in both.

The speaker then interjects and tonally shifts the poem, saying that his description of the ice-storm birches was a digression, but one that was full of “Truth […] [w]ith all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm” (Lines 21-22). He acknowledges the values of this digression, noting that this kind of meditation is valuable and meaningful, and provides a view into the operations of the natural world. What the speaker would prefer, however, is to imagine the birches bent as a result of a boy who was swinging them. He creates a specific image of this boy as “too far from town to learn baseball, / Whose only play was what he found himself, / Summer or winter, and could play alone” (Lines 25-27). Frost describes the boy as solitary but crafts the image so that he does not appear lonely. Rather, he understands the joy the natural world can provide him, and his relationship with nature gives him an understanding of its power.

Frost writes, “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” (Lines 28-32). The boy understands their inherent power and the need to subdue them. He spends time with them and learns what he needs to “about not launching out too soon / And so not carrying the tree away / Clear to the ground” (Lines 33-35). Frost specifies the boy’s relationship with the trees and the care he takes with them. He writes that the boy “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” (Lines 35-38). Frost’s metaphor comparing the boy’s climbing to the filling of a cup beyond the brim evokes concentration and attention to detail, deftly characterizing the boy with one imagistic detail. Comparing the boy’s actions in the woods to a more domestic action, that of filling a cup, draws more attention to it and highlights that this characteristic is one that extends throughout his life. Coupled with this intricate attention to detail, however, is also a willingness to let go. The boy, after meticulously climbing to the top of the tree, “flung outward, feet first, with a swish, / Kicking his way down through the air to the ground” (Lines 39-40). The boy has balance in his approach to the trees.

The speaker then creates another tonal shift as he says, “So was I once myself a swinger of birches. / And so I dream of going back to be” (Lines 41-42). Frost draws the reader back into the meditative occasion of the poem, emphasizing the speaker’s musing on the past and nostalgia for the clarity of youth. He suggests that the story of the boy might be a memory for the speaker and not strictly an imagined story. The speaker feels this nostalgia in specific moments, “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” (Lines 43-47). The speaker explicitly introduces an element of violence, fear, and danger here, as his meditations move from the past to the present, from childhood to adulthood.

The situation prompts him to declare “I’d like to get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over” (Lines 48-49). The poem turns to a more philosophical tone, shifting from the concrete, natural imagery to notions of heaven, mortality, and escape. While the speaker has described some of the suffering of his adult life, he does not want his reader to misunderstand him as not loving and appreciating his life, and particularly the natural world. He clearly states: “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” (Lines 50-53). Despite the pain and confusion of his adult life, the speaker still finds beauty and meaning in the world, and most importantly, love. He does not believe that any other place, not even an afterworld like heaven, could be better.

Frost closes out the poem by circling back to the birch imagery, as his speaker claims that he’d like to “go” by climbing a birch “Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, / But dipped its top and set me down again” (Lines 56-57). The speaker does not wish to go to heaven, but he craves the feeling of being close to it. He says that the good part is “both going and coming back” (Line 58), claiming that the dynamism of this action is preferable to the static of any other place, and that the possibility of darkness that he’s experienced in the pathless wood makes better the climbing of the birch tree. Frost ends the poem with a colloquial understatement: “Once could do worse than be a swinger of birches” (Line 59), returning to the causal intimacy he has created with his reader and ending on a subtle note of verbal irony.