THE POEM
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
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.
THE CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Robert Frost’s most well liked and admirable poem is “Birches”. However, like many of his poems, there is far more incidents within the poem itself than first appears. “Birches” was first published in the Atlantic Monthly. This poem with its structural excellence, its animosity of the internal and external worlds, and its sporadic dry wit reflects the durable aspects Frost’s writings. The central imagery of the poem is sequences of birch that have been curved down so that they no longer stand up straight but rather are arched over. While the poet quickly maintains that he perceives the exact reason that this has occurred—ice storms have weighed down the branches of the birch trees, causing them to bend over—he chooses instead to ruminate that something else entirely has happened: a young boy has went up to the top of the trees and dragged them down, riding the trees as they bow down and then coil back up over and over again until they become curved over. This rigidity between what has indeed occurred and what the poet would like to have happened, between the real world and the world of the fancy, moves all over Frost’s literary works and provides the poem rational dimension and meaning far greater than that of a simple pondering on birch trees. When the poet returned to the United States, North of Boston was published there and became a great accomplishment, bringing him fame on the spot. From then on, Frost settled into a career of writing and teaching, holding jobs at several major universities. He rapidly became celebrated as one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry four times. In 1961, he was invited to read one of his poems at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Frost’s personal life, in contrast to his professional success, was often painful and bitter. Only four of his six children survived to adulthood; one of his daughters died after giving birth, another was institutionalized for mental illness, and his son committed suicide. His marriage was often stormy, and Frost has been accused of being cruel and domineering to his family. He strongly disliked leftwing politics and programs, such as the New Deal, which earned him the distrust of many literary critics. He was disappointed that he never received the Nobel Prize for literature. Robert Frost died at the age of eighty-eight on January 29, 1963, in Boston, Massachusetts. “Birches” has been viewed as an important expression of Frost’s philosophical outlook as well as a transitional poem that signaled a significant change in his literary development. Critic Jeffrey Hart, writing in Sewanee Review, terms “Birches” a “Frostian manifesto” due to the poem’s skeptical tone regarding spiritual matters. Hart draws attention to the first part of the poem, where Frost presents the fantastic idea that the trees were bent by a boy, then discredits this thought with a more rational explanation regarding ice storms. In this manner, according to Hart, Frost casts doubt on the irrational aspects of the spiritual realm and upholds the value of earthly reality. “Birches,” the critic writes, “asserts the claims of Frost’s skepticism and sense of human limits against the desire for transcendence and the sense of mysterious possibility.” A similar conclusion is reached by Floyd C. Watkins in an essay published in South Atlantic Quarterly. Watkins explains that Frost “contemplates a moment when the soul may be completely absorbed into a union with the divine. But he is earthbound, limited, afraid. No sooner does he wish to get away from earth than he thinks of ‘fate’— rather than God. And what might be a mystical experience turns into fear of death, a fear that he would be snatched away ‘not to return.’” John C. Kemp, in his book Robert Frost and New England, notes that “Birches” was written at a time when Frost’s work took a new direction. In 1913, the poet was completing work on North of Boston, a collection that is considered one of his finest. “Birches” was also composed in 1913 but was withheld from North of Boston. Kemp believes that Frost made this decision because he “evidently knew that he had done something different in [‘Birches’], something not quite appropriate to the tone and dramatic impetus of the other poems” that were published in the volume. In specifying what that difference is, Kemp argues that the poems in North of Boston often reflect the observations of “perplexed and uncertain” outsiders as they observe rural New England life. “Birches” on the other hand, expresses the “confident, affirmative, and dominating” voice of the “Yankee farmer.” The farmer is a self-assured native who delivers pronouncements and wisdom based on his experiences in the countryside. Frost’s later poetry continued and intensified this attitude, according to Kemp, making “Birches” a precursor of Frost’s subsequent work. The critic also contends that this change in direction ultimately harmed Frost’s poetry. “By adopting the stance of the Yankee farmer,” Kemp writes, “Frost committed himself to conventional poses and slighted his original, imaginative impulses.”
