Birches by Robert Frost
"Birches" is a lyric poem by the renowned American poet Robert Frost, celebrated for its vivid imagery and reflective themes. Composed of fifty-nine lines of blank verse, the poem depicts birch trees in a New England landscape, evoking childhood memories of swinging from their branches. In an informal, conversational tone, Frost uses a first-person perspective, allowing readers to engage with his nostalgic thoughts about youth and the burdens of adulthood.
The poem unfolds in a continuous form without formal stanzas, creating a fluid narrative that shifts between whimsical imagination and stark reality. Frost begins by playfully suggesting that bent birches are the result of a boy's playful swinging, only to later introduce the harsh truth of winter storms that actually cause the trees to bow. These themes of childhood joy and adult responsibility are explored as the poet expresses a longing to return to simpler, carefree times.
Ultimately, Frost reconciles these contrasting elements by suggesting that while he enjoys the imaginative escape of childhood, he recognizes the value of earthly existence and real-life connections. The poem concludes with a sense of balance, implying that both play and responsibility can coexist in life. "Birches" captures the universal tension between the innocence of youth and the complexities of growing up, making it a timeless piece of literature.
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Birches by Robert Frost
First published: 1916, in Mountain Interval
Type of poem: Lyric
The Poem
“Birches” is an enduringly popular lyric by one of the United States’ most celebrated poets. In fifty-nine lines of blank verse, the poem presents a description of birch trees in a New England countryside, scenes of a boy swinging from these trees, and reflections on the meaning that being “a swinger of birches” has in Robert Frost’s life. He addresses the reader in an informal, conversational manner, using the first person “I” and addressing the reader casually as “you.” Sometimes poets create first-person speakers who are quite different from themselves. In “Birches,” however, Frost seems to be speaking in his own voice: as a grown man who has often observed and mused upon the birch trees he is describing, who remembers swinging from birches as a boy, and who has endured the adult tribulations he discusses late in the poem.
Frost reinforces the effect of conversational informality by casting the poem in continuous form. Rather than dividing the poem into stanzas or other formal sections, Frost presents an unbroken sequence of fifty-nine lines. Within this continuous form, however, Frost does shift his focus and tone, sometimes abruptly, as if he were digressing in a conversation with the reader. In this way, Frost’s major shifts reveal five sections in the poem.
In the brief first section (lines 1-3), Frost muses that when he sees birch trees that are bent over, he “like[s] to think” it is because “some boy’s been swinging them.” Frost quickly rejects this pleasant thought as whimsical and inaccurate, though. In the second section (lines 4-20), he presents a more dismal and realistic explanation: Winter storms coat the birches with a heavy load of ice that causes them to grow in a bent-over position.
In the third section (lines 21-40), however, Frost playfully reverts to his original theory. In contrast to the ice-storm explanation, he “prefer[s]” to develop the myth of a boy who bends down all the birches on his father’s land “by riding them down over and over again.” Toward the end of this section, Frost’s description vividly dramatizes the skill and exhilaration of the boy’s play.
The fourth section (lines 41-49) returns to a tone of burdensome gloom that echoes section 2. Now, however, instead of the birches suffering, it is the poet. Frost reveals that he himself was once “a swinger of birches,” and he ruefully admits that he now dreams of returning to this activity as a release from the worry, confusion, and pain of adult life.
In the fifth section (lines 50-59), Frost ends the poem on a note of hopeful reconciliation. He realizes that he does not wish for a total escape from the earth and the troubles he experiences there, but only for a temporary respite.
Forms and Devices
The key action described in “Birches” consists of swinging free of the constraints of the earth, up toward heaven and through the air, before landing on the ground again. Through his careful organization of imagery, tropes, and myth, Frost designs the poem as a delightful reflection of its content. That is to say, he takes the reader through a series of swings back and forth between earthbound realities and imaginative possibilities.
The first section of the poem, for example, swings from a real image that Frost has observed (birches bent over) to a myth he would like to believe (that the birches are bent because of a boy’s play). In the second section, though, the poem swings back grimly toward reality, as Frost presents dismal images of how ice left by winter storms actually bends the birches: “They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load.” Frost also observes ruefully, “once they are bowed/ So low for long, they never right themselves.”
The grim power of reality in the second section seems to inspire Frost to assert the countervailing power of his imagination even more strongly. He thus begins the third section by playfully personifying reality as a rude interrupter that he can easily dismiss: “But I was going to say when Truth broke in/ With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm.” Aware of his own impudence, Frost then imagines a mythical account of how the birches were bent by a boy whose powerful control over reality seems to reflect the power Frost is claiming for his own imagination. The boy “subdued” all his father’s birches into bent-over arches until “not one was left/ For him to conquer.”
Frost swings back to reality in the fourth section through the surprising revelation that he was once himself “a swinger of birches.” The poet has not, however, enjoyed the satisfying mastery over his life that the mythical boy did over his father’s birch trees, and Frost “dream[s] of going back to be” a swinger of birches once again as a release from the cares of adult life.
In the first four sections of the poem, then, Frost seems to be largely concerned with dramatizing the conflict between the harsh limitations of earthbound reality, and the more attractive possibilities of play and the imagination. The images of the last ten lines, however, present a surprising and harmonious synthesis of the two extremes. Frost emphasizes that he is no longer so naïve as to wish for complete escape from the earth and its cares. “Earth’s the right place for love,” he asserts, implying that it need not exist chiefly in heaven or in the imagination. Similarly, he does not take the regressive, whimsical route of imagining that he would swing up and out from a birch tree with the aggressive abandon he had exhibited as a youth. Instead, he imagines the milder pleasures of the gradual climb up the tree “Toward heaven” (not the impossible fantasy of soaring into it) and of the gentle descent as the tree would place him down on the ground. In this way, Frost imagines a birch-swinging experience that “would be good both going and coming back,” without the conflict between imaginative flight and earthly reality that seemed to prevail earlier in the poem.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Robert Frost. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
Burnshaw, Stanley. Robert Frost Himself. New York: George Braziller, 1986.
Faggen, Robert. Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Galbraith, Astrid. New England as Poetic Landscape: Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Gerber, Philip L. Robert Frost. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
Lathem, Edward Connery. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Poirier, Richard. Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Potter, James L. The Robert Frost Handbook. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.
Pritchard, William H. Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Thompson, Lawrance Roger, and R. H. Winnick. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982.