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Lines 1-3

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.

To begin with, we notice that the speaker is speaking in the first person to an imaginary
audience.
Birches are trees with slender trunks and bark that peels off like paper. They can grow up to
50 feet tall.
Because birches have thin trunks, they bend pretty easily in the wind and under the weight of
snow.
Also, some types of birches have white bark, so they stand out against "straighter darker
trees."
When the speaker sees the birch trees bent to the ground, he imagines that a young boy
was "swinging them." We can imagine that a birch would be bent a little after the swinging.

Lines 4-7
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain []

How would you swing on a birch tree? Would you grab a hold of the trunk and move spiral
around it?
From these lines we do that learn that whatever it is, swinging bends the tree down to the
ground. But, swinging doesn't bend the tree enough to cause permanent damage like an icestorm can.
During an ice-storm, the tree is covered with freezing rain. The rain coats the tree in a sheet
of ice that is formed during a cold winter night.
The speaker expects you to have experienced this first-hand, but if you haven't we can
assure you it is pretty cool to see the sun reflect off the ice.Here's a picture to help you visual
what trees look like after an ice-storm.

Lines 7-9
[] They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel

Not only does this sight of bending birches look beautiful, but a little wind can bump the icecovered branches against each other, causing clicking sounds. Now we're involving senses
besides sight (i.e., hearing).
This clicking action cracks the ice, but not all the way.
A "craze" is a poetic way of describing little cracks. They might look like veins or a small
crack in a windshield that resembles a spider web.
"Enamel" is a glassy outer surface. You might have seen it on pottery, like a hand-made
coffee mug, or you might have heard a dentist talk about tooth enamel. Either way, when we
see the word, "enamel," we think of something that's hard, shiny, and glossy. In this case,
the enamel is the coating of ice

Lines 10-12
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

When the sun gets hotter during the day, the ice covering the trees starts to melt.
It doesn't just melt like snow though. The ice is "cracked and crazed," so when it starts to
melt, the bits of ice between those cracks break and fall off the trees.
The speaker is using dramatic language to get you into the feeling of experience. He
compares the breaking ice to shattering crystal and glass that falls like an avalanche.
The snow is crusty, because the sun has melted the top layer of snow the day before and the
cold night made it freeze hard again.
The shattered ice collects below the tree as if it were a pile of glass being swept into a
dustpan.

Line 13
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

There are a couple of important things going on in this line.


"Dome" calls up a number of interesting connotations.
Early Judeo-Christian thinkers believed that the sky was a dome that separated heaven and
earth.
The idea of a dome also brings to mind the ceilings of some cathedrals and churches.
Emily Dickinson took this idea and combined it with nature. In her poem "Some keep the
Sabbath going to church," she writes how Nature is her church and she has exchanged an
"Orchard, for a Dome."
This falling dome business is another allusion. This time we can trace it to Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." Check out lines 45-49:
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,


That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

The emperor Kubla Khan had this icy, heavenly pleasure-dome built. Like all good things,
however, it didn't last.
By connecting "Birches" to "Kubla Khan," we might expect "Birches" to be a bittersweet
poem, perhaps about other things that don't last.

Lines 14-16
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:

The trees are bent down under the weight of ice and snow until they reach the shrubs and
ferns (a.k.a. "bracken") on the ground below.
To the speaker, the birches don't crack or craze like the ice. They bend, rather than break.
However, the word "seem" should tip you off that this might not be the case.
When the trees are bent down for the entirety of a New England winter, they don't straighten
out afterwards. So, in a sense, they're broken.

Lines 17-20
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.

The speaker paints us a vivid picture of what these "broken" trees look like when the snow
thaws and their leaves come back.
The speaker says that the trees look like girls drying their hair in the sun.
Those of us with short hair may not realize that long hair takes forever to dry. Now imagine
drying hair in the days before hairdryers.
These country girls that the speaker describes are on their hands and knees, bending their
heads down so that the sun can dry their hair.

Lines 21-22
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,

We see that the speaker got a little distracted by talking about the image of girls drying their
hair, but now he's back.
We're not sure what he has come back to. This might just be a poet's way of telling his
audience that he's shifting gears to a new topic.
Also, whenever the idea of "Truth" enters into a poem, you should be suspicious.
Here "Truth" is associated with "matter-of-fact" in the sense of real-life observations about
nature or amateur science.
That "Truth" becomes a part of the discussion should clue you in that the speaker might be
testing the poetic waters for different ideas about facts, values, science, nature, and
spirituality (a.k.a. metaphysics).

Lines 23-27
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.

First, we got the country girls, and now we've moved on to the boys.
The speaker is wishfully imagining that a boy were bending the trees instead of the wind, ice,
and snow.
He comes up with some details about who our tree-bender might be. He imagines a boy who
herds cows, doesn't know how to play baseball, and doesn't have any friends.
The boy lives on an isolated, New England farm and has to work. He has to entertain himself
year round and so he explores his natural world. Maybe he's training to become the next
Robert Frost.

Lines 28-32
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 []

The speaker imagines the boy going out into his father's land.
The boy "rides" the birch trees down, meaning that the boy climbs to the top of them until his
weight bends the trees down to the ground.
Remember this is what the speaker wishes was bending the trees instead of the snow and
ice.
The boy does this so many times on his father's land that the trees lose their stiffness and
bend towards the ground.

One way to interpret line 32 is to see it as an example of man conquering nature. Can you
find another way to interpret it?

Lines 32-35
[] He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground []

The boy starts to get better about swinging the trees over time.
He learns to get all the way to the top of the tree and not bend it too soon, before he's
reached the top.
If he did jump out too soon, the tree would be damaged.
If you're a science person, think of this as a Physics lesson combined with a Biology lesson:
the tree is a flexible lever; the roots are the fulcrum; the boy is the load.

Lines 35-38
[] 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.

Now we're getting some details of how the boy becomes better at swinging the trees.
He keeps "his poise," meaning he stays balanced and calm, sort of hovering up on a tree
branch.
The speaker compares it to filling a cup to the brim. If you are pouring liquid into a cup, you
are so careful not to overflow the cup, so you add a small amount of the liquid at a time.
Then you add just a teeny bit more and the liquid forms a dome just above the rim of the cup.
Think of this one as a Chemistry lesson. Are you beginning to notice that nature and science
play important roles in this Frost poem?

Lines 39-40
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his was down through the air to the ground.

The boy has filled the metaphorical cup above the brim and has now reached the top of the
tree.
Next he kicks his feet out (presumably holding onto a branch) and uses the tree like a
bungee chord.
The tree bends just enough so that the boy is lowered to the ground without harm.

Lines 41-42
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.

Here we have another transition. The speaker shifts gears from a young boy he imagines
swinging on a birch tree, to himself as an older man.
He seems to reflect on how he isn't young anymore.
Apparently the speaker can imagine this boy swinging trees in such great detail because he
was once that little boy.
He wishes he were out there swinging trees like he was a boy again.
So all these details could be memories from his boyhood: conquering nature, girls sunning
themselves, time alone to think about the natural world.

Lines 43-47
It's when I'm dreary 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.

The speaker wishes he could be a boy again when he's "dreary of considerations."
"Considerations" could mean thoughtful decision making an important adult activity.
That's probably not what he's weary of, however. Instead, "considerations" might refer to the
give and take of life. Older people have to give up things or pay for things that kids don't.
This might be a way for the speaker to lament the fact that his life is now filled with
responsibilities. What else might "considerations" mean?
Next the speaker compares life to "a pathless wood," meaning it's easy to get lost when
there are no directions provided.
Lines 45-47 give the details of what happens when you walk through a pathless wood. You
get sharp branches and spider webs in your face. These are all metaphors for the slings and
arrows of life.

Lines 48-49
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.

The speaker transitions to the idea that going back to his childhood is an escape. He wants
to take a vacation from life.
Whether it's a vacation from adult life with responsibilities or a vacation from the world of the
living, we don't know.

The idea to take away is that he wants a new beginning. He still enjoys life's pleasures, and
he doesn't want to die. But he doesn't want to be where he is now.

Lines 50-53
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.

The speaker seems to make the following disclaimer: "If any deity, higher power, etc. heard
me wish for a break from life, please don't take away my life without ensuring the safe return
after an agreed upon time."
Just in case his dreary outlook on life is a phase, the speaker says to himself that he has no
desire to make his vacation from life permanent.
His reason is that he is a lover of life. Anyone who appreciates the sway of trees in the
chilling wind loves life.
For the speaker, love is a worldly idea.
"It's" (meaning love) worldly to him, because the world is all he knows.
He recognizes that the world you know is better than an imagined one.

Lines 54-57
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.

This appreciation of life doesn't mean he isn't curious. The speaker still wonders about the
limits of life and tests out where life ends and heaven begins.
Line 54 has a funny wording that needs to be pointed out: "I'd like to go by" Usually people
talk like this about their own death: "I'd like to go in my sleep." So it seems like the speaker is
saying that he'd like to go to heaven by climbing a tree.
However in line 56 he says "Towards heaven," so he doesn't actually want to get to heaven
just yet.
In other words, to quote reggae legend Peter Tosh, "Everybody want to go to heaven, /
Nobody want to die."
Instead the speaker wants a peek at heaven from the top of the tree, then gently return to his
normal life.

Lines 58-59

That would be good both going and coming back.


One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

The speaker is pleased with this resolution. He likes the idea of a vacation from the troubles
of life, as long as it is only vacation and not a permanent situation.
The glimpse at the world from a new perspective would be rejuvenating.
He concludes, like he did in lines 52 and 53, that life's pleasures (like birch swinging) are
enough to make life worth living.

Symbol Analysis
Many poets, Frost included, like to play with the differences between appearances and observable
facts. At some point in you're life you've probably misunderstood something someone said and
messed up because of it, right? Also, you've probably had a dream that seems so real that you wake
up and have to figure out if it really happened or not. Poets like to be sneaky with what we assume
to be facts they often imagine how things could be different.

Line 9: The speaker calls the ice coating the trees enamel. Usually enamel refers to the
glossy and glassy coating around pottery. Pottery is considered art, but are trees art? The
poet has painted a pretty picture of the trees, but now the image "cracks and crazes." The
scientific reality of the sun and wind has broken up the artwork.
Lines 10 and 11: The speaker compares the ice to crystal shells and enhances the image
with descriptive language. The imagery of "[s]hattering and avalanching" ice is a vivid sight
to imagine.
Line 12: This metaphor of cracking ice as shattering crystal is conceptually tied together with
broken glass, because the two images are so similar. The need to sweep the heaps of glass
away turns the metaphor into an extended metaphor by adding on new metaphors to the
original.
Line 13: The extended metaphor reaches its conclusion with the shattering of the crystal
dome that was once said to separate earth from heaven.
Line 15: The extended metaphor is paralleled with how the birches "seem not to break."
Notice how appearances are getting tied up with imaginative language and metaphors.
Lines 19-20: The broken trees are compared to girls drying their hair in the sun.
This simile shows how the imagination can carry the speaker and reader away.
Line 21: "Truth" breaks into the poem, but the speaker is probably beingironic. The truths
we've come across aren't so matter of fact. Instead they are imaginative ideas inspired by
the "facts" of nature.
Line 44: This simile compares life to an overgrown forest. It's hard to tell what direction
you're going when you can't find a path and end up getting poked in the eye by a twig.

The boy in the poem is imaginary. Unlike the ice-storm that leaves its traces, the speaker only
imagines the boy. The speaker imagines the boy as a younger version of himself. We learn that the
boy represents the specific time in the speaker's life that was filled with simple pleasures, adventures

in nature, and idle hours. The boy is the Romantic version of the speaker's desire to commune with
nature, reaching to the heavens but never getting there.

Line 3: The speaker imagines a boy has bent some birches out of shape.
Lines 23-27: The imaginary boy lives in a "pastoral" world, meaning that he is closely tied
with animals and spends most of his time happily playing in nature.
Lines 28-32: The boy is also a metaphor for the rugged, American individual. He has struck
out into the land that is his by birthright and conquered anything there was to conquer. This
individual often stands as a metonymyfor America's Manifest Destiny towards the continent
(and world).
Lines 33-40: The boy learns moderation and sensitivity towards his natural environment. His
mastery of nature does not create a large "footprint."

Blank Verse (Mostly Unrhymed, Iambic Pentameter)


Frost writes this poem in blank verse, meaning that it doesn't rhyme (sad), but that it does have
interesting structure stuff going on. The poem loosely follows an iambic pentameter structure. But
what the heck does that mean? "Iambic" refers to the pattern of stresses in the line. An "iamb" is an
unstressed syllable, followed by a stressed syllable: da-DUM. "Pentameter" means that there are
five ("penta") iambs in the line: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Easy, right?
Although Frost wrote some formal and conservative verse, he's not known for that kind of poetry.
Rather, Frost earned critical and popular attention for his verse written in blank and free verse. He
liked to imitate the sound of regular or rural speech. English has a tendency to fall into the rhythm of
iambs, but occasionally throws in an anapest (which is two unstressed syllables followed by a
stressed syllable, da-da-DUM) at the beginning of a sentence or a dactyl (which is a stressed
syllable followed by two unstressed, DUM-da-da). Frost's verse, like English, is irregular but works
off of common patterns.

We get the sense that the speaker is an older man who is experienced and wistful. He grew up
before 1900, and the world at large is changing. However, he's managed to live in a pocket of the
United States that isn't much different from the way it was a hundred years ago. For example,
baseball became popular during the Civil War and the boy our speaker imagines doesn't know how
to play the sport. The full-grown man is probably a farmer. We imagine that his nights are restless,
because he's trying to figure out those "considerations." What can he put off a little longer? What has
to get done tomorrow? These are the thoughts that fill his head, and he wishes for the days of
carefree boyhood.

Where It All Goes Down


The setting of "Birches" is not explicitly given, so we have license, as readers, to use our
imagination. Here's one way that we envision the setting, but feel free to come up with your own.

It's a cold New England morning and the snow is almost up to your knee. We might be in Amherst,
Massachusetts (where Frost lived), but then again, we might be in another snowy, cold location. A
recent ice-storm has left the forest glazed in ice, and the branches of the trees bend under the
weight of the ice. The sun has melted the top layer of the snow to the point where it holds your
weight for only a second before breaking. Most of the forest animals have either migrated or are
hibernating, so you don't see any, and only hear the sounds of the icy tree branches clicking in the
wind. If you've never experienced an ice storm, you might want to check out this picture to see the
kind of setting Frost was probably picturing.

SOUND CHECK
Although Frost wrote some formal and conservative verse, with clear rhyme schemes, he's not
known for that kind of poetry. Rather, Frost liked to imitate the sound of regular or rural speech.
When you listen to this poem read aloud, it's almost as if you can hear the voice of a rural New
England man as he walks through the woods and reminisces about his youth. The speaker
occasionally digresses in a very natural way, becoming side-tracked by his own imagination, until he
perks up with a "but" or a "so" to get his mind and your attention back on track.

WHAT'S UP WITH THE TITLE?


"Birches" has deceptively simple name. It doesn't fill your head with huge ideas about nature or life.
But the poem itself does address these kinds of ideas. The title introduces one thing a birch tree
and then the poem becomes a meditation on the thing. That doesn't mean the poem is about birches
on the deepest level. Instead, "Birches" is like word association. The speaker begins with a beautiful
yet simple image, and then draws out some significant conclusions about his own life, stopping to
revisit his childhood on the way. It's as if someone says "birches" and then you say the first thing in
your mind. If the speaker was doing this exercise with his therapist, the speaker's therapist might tell
him that he (the speaker) is obsessed with escaping from reality.

CALLING CARD
Old Man and Young Boy
A lot of readers tend to associate Frost with older age. Most photos that you'll see of Robert Frost were
taken when he was an older man. Frost has a large number of poems about old men and only a handful of
younger men. This interest in age may have something to do with the fact that Frost lived in an area that
still had its footing in the old world. Old age doesn't really mean anything, however, unless it can be
contrasted to youth. The young represent such important things to poets: innocence, other-worldliness,
and endless opportunity.

Base Camp
The tough part about "Birches" is following the narrative. For the first read-through you might not
have any idea what it means to swing a tree. Also, if you've never spent time in a cold and wooded
environment, you might have to do some imaginative work to visualize the details of the scenery and

subject matter. If you can't figure out if the speaker is talking about death, imaginary heaven, or just
climbing trees, don't worry. It's supposed to be vague.

When poets refer to other great works, people, and


events, its usually not accidental. Put on your supersleuth hat and figure out why.
Literary and Philosophical References

Emily Dickinson (Line 13)


Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Line 13)

YOUTH THEME
Youth, like death, is a constant backdrop for many of Frost's poems. The speaker of "Birches" never
sees a boy or comes across one. He only imagines one, and the boy that he does imagine is himself
at a younger age. The boy seems to be similar to William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman's
portrayals of boys. These boys have their own rules and wisdom that they can pass on to the older
men and women around them. They are ready for adventures in nature and represent the wild,
untamed state of "man" that remains good and moral even though no one is there to govern him.

I like to think some boy's been swinging them (Line 3)


The swinging is only done by the boy. Why is it that the older man doesn't start to swing on the tree
like he did in his youth? Is it because he is afraid of risking injury, or might there be another reason
for avoiding swinging?

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair (Line 19)
The girls seem as carefree as the boy. And yet, there seems to be a gender difference in terms of
how the girls and the boy interact with the natural world. How do you understand the relationship of
each to nature?

I should prefer some boy to bend them (Line 23)


Nowadays, one might think it's strange to take pleasure in the thought of a boy breaking a tree. But
Frost takes innocent delight in the idea of a boy swinging on a birch tree. (We later learn that he
might be reminiscing about his childhood here.)

Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.

Life as a youth is just as much as a pathless wood as in adulthood; it's the lack of considerations that
makes youth easier.The boy in "Birches" is the teacher to the speaker.

MAN AND THE NATURAL WORLD THEME


In "Birches," Frost incorporates ideas from two similar traditions. The first is the Romantic tradition,
poets like Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats often set their characters in Nature (notice the
capital N). The character (often male) would embark on adventures or long walks. Sometimes
Nature would challenge him. Other times he would have blissful moments and feel one with the
natural world. Sometimes these interactions with Nature got scary, but the combination of fear and
joy made the character worthy of doing great things. The other tradition is the Transcendentalist
tradition. Writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman toned down the scary part of Nature and
almost made Nature into a philosophy/religion. This tradition became popular as American's started
to explore what was left of America to explore. This exploration demanded a lot of labor and
sacrifice, so people talked up the idea that it was America's destiny to recruit rugged individuals to
live in the middle of nowhere. In this poem Frost plays around with many of these ideas.

Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
"Birches" is about the masculine need to dominate the world, because the boy conquers trees while the
girls are represented by conquered trees. The boy has attempted to conquer trees and see heaven, but the
man failed to conquer earthly life.
SPIRITUALITY THEME
Robert Frost is not the kind of poet to insert religious imagery into his poems. A subtle Christian
allusion is rare. However, the poet writes a lot of meditations on life and death, so that always brings
in spiritual questions. In "Birches," Frost mentions "heaven" twice. Notice how it is always with a
lower-case h and is more suggestive of the sky than paradise. The poem could be read as an
allegory, but it's a little too skeptical for that.

Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
The speaker uses "Truth" ironically to express his skepticism of all belief (including science).
The speaker uses some images that could be seen as religious, but expresses them in such a vague
way that a reader can't turn "Birches" into a religious allegory.

ISOLATION
As with much of Frost's poetry, "Birches" creates a mood of loneliness and isolation. Some factors
that contribute to the mood include the winter weather, which seems to cut the speaker off from
other people, and the speaker's discussion of the boy growing up on an isolated farm. The speaker's
loneliness may be the result of adult concerns and considerations.

Chew on This

Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.


The speaker's loneliness is the result of the isolating advances of the modern world.
The speaker's desire for heaven is a communion with the natural world, not a desire for isolation.

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