“Birches” by Robert Frost

Welcome to the second post in our Appreciation of Poetry Semi-Series (a title I just made up to indicate the occasional discussion of randomly-selected poems on Past Watchful Dragons this year). We’re starting with one of my all-time favorite poems from one of America’s most beloved poets: “Birches” by Robert Frost.

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

As ice-storms do. 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.

Deeper Levels

This has been one of my favorite poems since I discovered it during college many moons ago. It’s expressive and evocative without even inviting rhyme or meter to the party. (Then how is it a poem, you ask? Because the third element of poetry is figures of speech like consonance, assonance, similes, metaphors, and many more that we can discuss another time.) Like many of Frost’s poems, the surface level is an unassuming observation about nature: birch trees aren’t hardwoods, so they bend.

But Frost’s poems have surprising richness because a simple reading yields simple delight, and deeper study brings deeper truths. The more I read this poem, the more I see that Frost isn’t just making lyrical observations about trees. I think he’s talking about the lasting effects of life in general and love in specific on our fragile hearts.

Bent or Broken

In my humble opinion, Frost seems to be pining for the simplicity of an unencumbered, unjaded life. The boy who tends his father’s cows is carefree and unaffected by the people in town. He carefully climbs birch trees to the very top and swing them gently down. He tames them until their limbs are no longer stiff. They’re bent but not broken.

Frost contrasts this with the damage wreaked by ice storms. Even after the shells shatter to the ground like the dome of heaven falling, the weight of the ice has left the trees permanently bowed. Although they seem not to break, the cumulative effect of these storms makes the birches unable to right themselves in the end.

Peace from the Pathless Wood

While the imagery of the bent trees shows us what Frost is talking about, he verbalizes his message more clearly toward the end. He wants to escape the difficult “considerations” that have battered him. He doesn’t want to give up completely, but he’d like to get away from the ice storms of love for a while and come back to start over, like the boy climbing and swinging.

Frost hasn’t completely lost faith in life or love. “Earth’s the right place for love: /I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” But after sustaining heartbreaks that feel like twigs lashing his open eye, he longs for some solitude and a fresh start.

The Tree to Heaven

Frost knows that climbing a birch can’t get him all the way to heaven, but he thinks the climb up and the swing down would be worth it anyway. But heaven is exactly where love is likely to go better than on our ice-encrusted earth. Thank God that Jesus hung on a tree to bring us to heaven—a far better plan than our climbing a birch to get there.

As a way to eternal peace, swinging on birches just won’t cut it. But as a reminder of simpler times and a break from the pains of life and love, I whole-heartedly agree that “one could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”