![]() The use of contrast is seen throughout the poem: black/white, ideal/real, heat/cold, old age/adolescence, fact/fiction. The other is a subjective explanation based on fantasy which creates a possibility of that which can be. One is the objective, fact based explanation which states that which is. The boy and the ice storm both are explanations for the truth behind the state of the bent birches. He knows it isn’t the work of a harmless boy. However, he is fully away that it cannot be the case as the birches have been permanently bent. When the poet sees birches bending to left and right in the backdrop of “straighter and darker ” trees, he likes to believe it is the work of some country boy who must’ve indulged in swinging them. The poem opens with the sight of curiously bent birches trees. īut swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. When I see birches bend to left and rightĪcross the lines of straighter darker trees, Birches | Summary and Analysis Birches Analysis, Lines 1-5 Got No Time? Check out this Quick Revision by Litbug. The poet wishes to be able to revisit the childhood experience of swinging the birches in order to get a momentary respite from the adult world. Birches are given a human treatment in this poem and the manner in which they weather the climatic conditions is symbolic of the various challenges which the adult life is fraught with. ![]() The swinging of birches is used as a distraction, a passtime to busy oneself in order to escape the realities and hardships of the adult world. The poem describes the simple act of swinging the birch trees, a common sport among children in rural New England where Frost spent his childhood. Written in blank verse and composed in a charmingly conversational tone, the poem revolves around the themes of the nature of Truth, the relation between fact and fiction, revisiting one’s childhood and the balance between life and art which must be maintained for a meaningful life. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.Birches is a wisdom-laden poem by Robert Frost which was a part of a collection titled Mountain Interval (1916). That would be good both going and coming back. Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,īut dipped its top and set me down again. I don't know where it's likely to go better.Īnd climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsįrom a twig's having lashed across it open.Īnd half grant what I wish and snatch me away ![]() ".So was I once myself a swinger of birches.Īnd life is too much like a pathless wood ![]() We were also reminded of Robert Frost's poem: ![]() Nearby, younger birch grow strong and supple with the bark of youth.Īn author we read at the time described the symbolic qualities of birch trees as "new beginnings, cleansing of the past, vision quests." No doubt fanciful, the attributes resonated, and we embraced them as emblematic of our work in this chapter of life. Many of the trees are mature, bearing the wrinkled skin of decades and the scars from the ice storm of 1998. Exploring the land as our home was being built, we came upon a patch of birches in a corner of the woods where two stone walls meet. Birch Corner is a place of inspiration for us. ![]()
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