Robert Frost
‘BIRCHES’
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Focus is on the way that the branches of birches bend and droop so
much.
Contrast of their bending “to left and right” against the other
“straighter” trees.
Description of ice storm is rich in appeal to senses:–
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“Loaded with ice” – tactile image, implying the touch of the
weight of ice.
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“They click upon themselves” – an image of sound, emphasised
by the onomatopoeia.
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“the stir cracks and crazes their enamel” – both visual and
auditory, the alliteration enhancing the effect.
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“the sun’s warmth” – thermal image showing effect of sun on a
winter’s day.
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Alliteration and sound echo in how the sun makes them “shed
crystal shells /Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust” –
the repetition of “sh” sounds is like the snow while the repetition
of “cr” sounds throughout these lines echoes the sound of the ice
on the branches.
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“heaps of broken glass” – the metaphor allowing reader to
envisage the profusion of sharp-edged pieces.
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Very visual image, with the sensation of the heavy weight of the
ice, in “they are dragged to the withered bracken by the load”,
whilst the “withered bracken” conveys a sense of winter’s deadly
vegetation: its unappealing description is in contrast to the
“many-colored” crystalline beauty of the ice on the branches.
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It is as if heaven itself is on the ground, as if the “inner dome of
heaven” has fallen.
The branches “are bowed” for ever: for “years afterwards”, they trail
“their leaves on the ground”.
Something contrary in this – its branches were meant to grow upwards.
“I like to think” it has been caused by a boy’s playfulness – no
sentimentality or preciousness about nature (like “The Need of being
Versed …”) – happily acknowledges that he was once “a swinger of
birches”.
In truth, the damage has been caused by ice storms but in Frost’s
imagination, it is some country boy playing on them alone: Frost
“should prefer” this to be the case, suggesting his approval that nature
should be enjoyed in practical ways by human beings.
It is possible that some of this imaginary boy’s play has been
masturbatory, Frost’s references that the boy could “play alone”, “riding”
the branches until he removed “the stiffness” and made them “limp”
intimating this.
Another contrary pull or conflict is between earth and heaven. The
imagined boy might climb “to the top branches”, the same branches that
eventually end up earth-bound.
‘Birches’ copyright © Robert Frost
© 2006 www.teachit.co.uk
4838.doc
Page 1 of 2
Robert Frost
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Sense of huge determination and control with which this boy might
climb “with the same pains you use to fill a cup up to the brim”.
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The tree-climbing boy would then fling himself with abandon, the
opposite of the measured, well-placed steps that took him to the
treetops, swinging in the trees until he again arrived on the ground.
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Idea seems to be the human need to evade what is earth-bound, giving
freedom to the spirit sometimes. Perhaps this occasional abandon or
escape is needed as a balance to the more humdrum parts of life.
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Frost, too, is sometimes restless, it seems, and he dreams of “going
back” to a time when he was more abandoned, more carefree, with fewer
“considerations”.
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Life can be a mundane and confusing struggle, “a pathless wood”
through which humans must go.
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As humans make their way through life, there can be impediments and
irritants and that is when Frost says that he would “like to get away from
earth awhile”.
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There are implications of a desire to escape this earth’s problems and
this human life’s burdens but this is escapist fantasy only: he does not
yet want to die, to be snatched “away not to return”.
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“Earth’s the right place for love”, he avers and this is not something that
he wants to leave.
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At the end, he seems to be talking of death, “I’d like to go by climbing a
birch tree” again using a contrast in the “black branches” and “snowwhite trunk”.
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He emphasises, however, by the use of italics that this would be “toward
heaven” but then his weight, like that of the ice, would cause the branch
to bend and “set me down again”.
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This seems to be a suggestion of being able to live in both worlds, reality
and the imagination.
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Restlessness of the human spirit could be satisfied this way.
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Language of poem is normal and conversational, “But I was going to
say …”, “swinging doesn’t bend them”, “you’d think …”.
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Swinging in the birch trees is like swinging between opposites: there are
many contrasts inside this poem – earth and heaven, control and
abandon, reality and imagination, escape and responsibility.
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First person used – the reader assumes this to be Frost.
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Second person used as Frost chattily addresses the reader – “you must
have seen them”.
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Truth is personified as she breaks in “with all her matter of fact” when
the narrator was enjoying the idea that some frolicking boy had caused
the damage.
‘Birches’ copyright © Robert Frost
© 2006 www.teachit.co.uk
4838.doc
Page 2 of 2