birches by robert frost essay

Birches Summary & Analysis by Robert Frost

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

Robert Frost wrote "Birches" between 1913 and 1914, eventually publishing it in The Atlantic Monthly 's August issue in 1915. The poem was later included in Frost's third collection of poetry, Mountain Interval . Consisting of 59 lines of blank verse , the poem features a speaker who likes to imagine that the reason ice-covered birch trees are stooped is that a young boy has been climbing them and swinging to the ground while holding onto the flexible treetops. This, it eventually becomes clear, is something the speaker once did as a child, and this turns the poem into a nostalgic celebration of youthful joy while also juxtaposing childish spontaneity with the more serious, mundane realities of adulthood.

• Read the full text of “Birches”

The Full Text of “Birches”

1 When I see birches bend to left and right

2 Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

3 I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

4 But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

5 As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

6 Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

7 After a rain. They click upon themselves

8 As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

9 As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

10 Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

11 Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

12 Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

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

14 They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

15 And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

16 So low for long, they never right themselves:

17 You may see their trunks arching in the woods

18 Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

19 Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

20 Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

21 But I was going to say when Truth broke in

22 With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

23 I should prefer to have some boy bend them

24 As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

25 Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

26 Whose only play was what he found himself,

27 Summer or winter, and could play alone.

28 One by one he subdued his father's trees

29 By riding them down over and over again

30 Until he took the stiffness out of them,

31 And not one but hung limp, not one was left

32 For him to conquer. He learned all there was

33 To learn about not launching out too soon

34 And so not carrying the tree away

35 Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

36 To the top branches, climbing carefully

37 With the same pains you use to fill a cup

38 Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

39 Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

40 Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

41 So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

42 And so I dream of going back to be.

43 It's when I'm weary of considerations,

44 And life is too much like a pathless wood

45 Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

46 Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

47 From a twig's having lashed across it open.

48 I'd like to get away from earth awhile

49 And then come back to it and begin over.

50 May no fate willfully misunderstand me

51 And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

52 Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:

53 I don't know where it's likely to go better.

54 I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

55 And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

56 Toward  heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

57 But dipped its top and set me down again.

58 That would be good both going and coming back.

59 One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

“Birches” Summary

“birches” themes.

The Joy of Childhood

• See where this theme is active in the poem.

The Tedious Reality of Adulthood

Death, Spirituality, and Escape

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “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 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—

Lines 12-16

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:

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.

Lines 21-27

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.

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.

Lines 32-40

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.

Lines 41-47

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.

Lines 48-52

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.

Lines 52-56

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,

Lines 56-59

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.

“Birches” Symbols

Swinging from Birch Trees

• See where this symbol appears in the poem.

“Birches” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

Alliteration.

• See where this poetic device appears in the poem.

Personification

Juxtaposition, “birches” vocabulary.

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Many-colored
• The inner dome of heaven
• Pathless wood
• See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Birches”

Rhyme scheme, “birches” speaker, “birches” setting, literary and historical context of “birches”, more “birches” resources, external resources.

The Robert Frost Farm — Read about Robert Frost's legacy in New England – where he swung from birches as a boy—and the farm  that bears his name!

Robert Frost Reads "Birches" — Hear the poet himself read "Birches" in this old recording.

Birch Swinging — Check out this video of somebody demonstrating how to swing from a birch tree.

The Poet's Life — For more information about Robert Frost, take a look at this brief overview of his life and work. 

Frost and the "Sound of Sense" — Learn more about Frost's thoughts on "sound of sense," a term he used to describe the significance of sound in poetry, especially when applied to straightforward but impassioned language.

LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost

Acquainted with the Night

After Apple-Picking

A Roadside Stand

Desert Places

Dust of Snow

Fire and Ice

Home Burial

Mending Wall

My November Guest

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

The Death of the Hired Man

The Oven Bird

The Road Not Taken

The Sound of the Trees

The Tuft of Flowers

The Wood-Pile

Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions

A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Birches’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Originally titled ‘Swinging Birches’, the poem ‘Birches’ is one of Robert Frost’s most widely anthologised and studied poems, first published in 1915. Although Frost’s style is often direct and accessible, his poems are subtle and sometimes even ambiguous in their effects, so some words of analysis may be of use here.

You can read ‘Birches’ here before proceeding to our analysis of the poem below.

‘Birches’: summary and analysis

‘Birches’ draws on Robert Frost’s childhood memories of swinging on birch trees as a boy. In summary, the poem is a meditation on these trees, which are supple (i.e. easily bent) but strong (not easily broken). Contrasting the birches with ‘straighter darker trees’ which surround them, Frost says he likes to think they are bent because a boy has been swinging on them.

But he knows this is probably not the reason the birches bend: nature, and in particular that common feature of Frost’s poem (aptly, given his surname), cold wintry weather, is probably responsible.

Frost describes how birches, after an ice-storm, ‘click upon themselves’, when they are loaded down with ice on a winter morning. As the day begins to warm up, the sun causes the ice to melt, and the birches shed ‘crystal shells’ of ice, like ‘heaps of broken glass’ fallen from the glass dome of heaven.

Even if the birches are ‘dragged’ down to the level of the withered bracken near the ground, the birches don’t appear to break, although they don’t straighten up easily once they have been bent really low.

Frost uses vivid and unusual imagery to describe the appearance of the birches: the simile likening the bent birches to ‘girls on hands and knees’, drying their hair in the sun, is especially memorable. It anthropomorphises the trees, but it also reinforces the speaker’s association between the birches and childhood (his preference for believing, even in the face of contrary evidence, that the birches are bent because of boys riding them for play).

It is at this moment during the speaker’s fanciful musings that ‘Truth’ (personified with a capital T) breaks in on his reverie: in other words, the speaker knew he couldn’t entertain the romanticised notion for long that the birches had been bent by boys having fun among them, and he knows, deep down, that the ice-storm was the more likely cause. This bringing-down-to-earth of romantic attitudes towards nature is a common feature of Robert Frost’s poetry.

However, Frost quickly returns to entertaining the idea of a small boy, living in a rural area where he can’t join or form a baseball team with other boys his age, discovering the joys of riding the birches: taking the ‘stiffness’ out of them one by one.

The emphasis is on play as a way of learning : a boy growing up in a town may ‘learn baseball’, but Frost’s imaginary youth ‘learned all there was / To learn’ about judging how long he should remain on the birch before jumping off.

We then learn (as it were) that Frost’s speaker can entertain this image at such length because he himself used to swing on birches as a boy: be is reliving his childhood freedom and joy through the memory. He would like to go back to such boyish innocence.

When nature presents problems – he walks through a wood without a clear path and gets a face full of cobwebs, or a twig lashes across his eye – he dreams of getting back to the simplicity of birches, which he had learned to judge and bring under his control.

However, when Frost (or his poem’s speaker, at least) says that he would like to ‘come back to [nature] and begin over’, there’s a sense of wistfulness that extends far greater than birch-swinging, hinting at the adult’s vain yearning to return to childhood and live his life over again. However, the level-headed reasonableness returns, and the speaker says that he doesn’t really want to leave nature behind, as ‘Earth’s the right place for love’.

Nevertheless, when his time to die does come, he’d like to die while climbing a birch tree, climbing towards heaven (note the rare use of italics to emphasise the idea of moving away from the earth, and nature, towards death), until the birch tree swung him back down to earth at the last minute.

‘Birches’: form

‘Birches’ is written in blank verse : unrhymed iambic pentameter . This means that there are (usually) ten syllables per line, with the syllables arranged into five metrical feet, in this case iambs, which comprise an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.

Frost was fond of using blank verse in his poetry: since it is close to the rhythms of regular human speech in the English language, it reflects his homespun, colloquial style. In the case of ‘Birches’, the unrhymed iambic pentameter rhythm suits the poem’s meditative, reflective mode.

About Robert Frost

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is regarded as one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century. And yet he didn’t belong to any particular movement: unlike his contemporaries William Carlos Williams or Wallace Stevens he was not a modernist, preferring more traditional modes and utilising a more direct and less obscure poetic language.

Discover more from Interesting Literature

Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.

Type your email…

9 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Robert Frost’s ‘Birches’”

A very good analysis of a Robert Frost poem I was unfamiliar with.

I’ve often walked among birches and seen Frost’s white hair in their bark, felled large old specimens into 4′ cylinders which over the years lose their wood, but the bark tube lasts on and on.

Years ago I worked as a live-in personal attendant for a man who had been rendered quadraplegic in a diving accident at the age of 19. He’d grown up in a small rural town and had always been an active boy. After his injury he majored in English, and kept a large poster with Frost’s Birches on it, with a background of birch trees. It wasn’t until after he passed that I really read the poem, and understood my friend’s longing to once again be a “swinger of birches.” If there’s a God in heaven my friend is once again doing just that.

Thanks for sharing such a nice analysis.

Written in a homespun style, as you say. And yet I was jolted by the fate who might “willfully misunderstand me”. Can this be a classical reference to the fate who cuts the thread of life? It must be, and yet what is it doing in this rural reflection? And then, we go on to what looks very like a conceit – the elaborated metaphor of the birch-swinging poet going up and yet not too far, getting toward, but not arriving at, heaven; all expressed in the same homespun phrasing – “that would be good”, “one could do worse”. In the final, say, dozen lines Frost seems to be in the vernacular, but not of it – if that’s not too pretentious a way of putting it!

Frost’s ability to weave deep metaphors in seeming simple attributes of nature is astounding. His homespun profundities sneak up and wallop a person with insight.

This poem brings particular memories for me. We studied it at school (In the early 80s when I was 15). It was one of our set text for the public exam (O level in the UK). Our teacher interpreted as being a poem all about masturbation – and spent a full 20 minutes explaining this interpretation – much to our embarrassed adolescent amusement. Of course we all dreaded it coming up in the exam. Fortunately it didn’t. I’ve never yet come across a similar interpretation again. I love the poem… and I can still see my teacher’s point. I think he was using it to share something that would not normally be covered in an English class, but a valuable, dare I say ‘life skills’ lesson. That’s the amazing power of great literature.

• Pingback: Sunday Post – 19th July, 2020 #Brainfluffbookblog #SundayPost | Brainfluff

Greatly done🤗🤗

Comments are closed.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Robert Frost: Poems

By robert frost, robert frost: poems summary and analysis of "birches" (1916).

When the narrator looks at the birch trees in the forest, he imagines that the arching bends in their branches are the result of a boy “swinging” on them. He realizes that the bends are actually caused by ice storms - the weight of the ice on the branches forces them to bend toward the ground - but he prefers his idea of the boy swinging on the branches, climbing up the tree trunks and swinging from side to side, from earth up to heaven. The narrator remembers when he used to swing on birches and wishes that he could return to those carefree days.

This poem is written in blank verse with a particular emphasis on the “sound of sense.” For example, when Frost describes the cracking of the ice on the branches, his selections of syllables create a visceral sense of the action taking place: “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…”

Originally, this poem was called “Swinging Birches,” a title that perhaps provides a more accurate depiction of the subject. In writing this poem, Frost was inspired by his childhood experience with swinging on birches, which was a popular game for children in rural areas of New England during the time. Frost’s own children were avid “birch swingers,” as demonstrated by a selection from his daughter Lesley’s journal: “On the way home, i climbed up a hi birch and came down with it and i stopt in the air about three feet and pap cout me.”

In the poem, the act of swinging on birches is presented as a way to escape the hard rationality or “Truth” of the adult world, if only for a moment. As the boy climbs up the tree, he is climbing toward “heaven” and a place where his imagination can be free. The narrator explains that climbing a birch is an opportunity to “get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over.” A swinger is still grounded in the earth through the roots of the tree as he climbs, but he is able to reach beyond his normal life on the earth and reach for a higher plane of existence.

Frost highlights the narrator’s regret that he can ow longer find this peace of mind from swinging on birches. Because he is an adult, he is unable to leave his responsibilities behind and climb toward heaven until he can start fresh on the earth. In fact, the narrator is not even able to enjoy the imagined view of a boy swinging in the birches. In the fourth line of the poem, he is forced to acknowledge the “Truth” of the birches: the bends are caused by winter storms, not by a boy swinging on them.

Significantly, the narrator’s desire to escape from the rational world is inconclusive. He wants to escape as a boy climbing toward heaven, but he also wants to return to the earth: both “going and coming back.” The freedom of imagination is appealing and wondrous, but the narrator still cannot avoid returning to “Truth” and his responsibilities on the ground; the escape is only a temporary one.

Robert Frost: Poems Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Robert Frost: Poems is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Robert Frost as a poet Symbolisms

This is a really detailed question for this short answer space. Nature is Frost's main motif for symbolism. Frost is intetrested in the cycle of life and death shown through the seasons in a way that people can connect with. There is also the idea...

Relationship between man and woman?

In Frost's poems (particularly after 1914), he focuses on the trouble men and women have within their intimate relationships and examines the reason why many of these relationships have stagnated.

You might want to check out Gradesaver's theme...

Discuss the theme of the poem "The Road Not Taken" written by Robert Frost.

The central theme of "The Road Not Taken" revolves around the significance of human choice. Through its tone, language, and structure, the poem is able to offer multiple understandings of what it means to choose. The first interpretation of choice...

Study Guide for Robert Frost: Poems

Robert Frost: Poems study guide contains a biography of poet Robert Frost, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of his major poems.

• About Robert Frost: Poems
• Robert Frost: Poems Summary
• "Mending Wall" Video
• Character List

Essays for Robert Frost: Poems

Robert Frost: Poems essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Robert Frost's poems.

• Nature Imagery in the Works of Robert Frost
• Robert Frost in England - A Short Biography
• An Explication of Mending Wall By Robert Frost
• The Most of It
• "Eternal Freshness of the Flawless Poem:" Why Frost's Poetry Remains Vital

Lesson Plan for Robert Frost: Poems

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Robert Frost: Poems
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Robert Frost: Poems Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Robert Frost: Poems

• Introduction
• Awards and recognition
• Legacy and cultural influence

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.

Summary of Birches

• Popularity of “Birches”: Robert Frost, a great American poet wrote ‘Birches’. This poem is known as one of the best literary pieces, for its themes of natural beauty and memory. The poem revolves around the beautiful, birches trees that are bent toward the ground. It also tells about the speaker ’s past experiences associated with those trees. Its popularity, however, lies in that it deals with the subject of a carefree life.
• “Birches” As a Representative of Natural Beauty: The poet illustrates how the dark and bending trees catch his attention. When he glances those birches bending left to right in the forest, he thinks that the boys swinging caused bends in their branches. Later, he realizes that these bends might also be caused by ice-storm as the weight of ice forces them to bend toward the ground due to the pressure. Although he imagines both situations, he prefers the first one recalling his memory of how he used to swing on the trees from side to side and from the earth up to heaven. He uses his active imagination to make readers feel the joy of swinging on birches trees. Also, he compares his life with a pathless wood and desire to get an escape into those carefree days of childhood. Therefore, he dreams about swinging in the birches to get away from the pains of life.
• Major Themes in “Birches”: Nature, memory, and childhood are the major themes of this poem. The poem speaks about the poet’s encounter with those beautiful trees. It illustrates how he associates two different ideas while looking at the bent branches of those beautiful trees. The beautiful widespread bends in the branches remind him of his beautiful past days. Also, he imagines how natural calamities can transform the actual appearances of the objects . He desires to be the swingers of birches as he was in his childhood.

Analysis of Literary Devices Used in “Birches”

literary devices are tools used to convey emotions, ideas, and themes in a poem or a story . With the help of these devices, the writers make their texts more appealing to the reader. Robert Frost has also employed some literary devices in this poem to capture the beauty of birches trees. The analysis of some of the literary devices used in this poem has been stated below.

• Assonance : Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line. For example, the sound of /a/ in “Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—”.
• Consonance : Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /l/ in “Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells”.
• Personification : Personification is to give human qualities to inanimate objects. For example, in line sixteen, “So low for long, they never right themselves”. As if the trees are human and can correct their postures but not they are not willing to do that.
• Anaphora : It refers to the repetition of a word or expression in the first part of some verses. For example, “As the” in the first stanza of the poem is repeated to emphasize the point.
• Alliteration : Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line in quick succession. For example, the sound if /c/ in “As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel” and the sound of /b/ in “When I see birches bend to left and right”.
• Simile : Simile is used to compare something with something else to make the meanings clear to the readers. For example,

“Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair.”

• Imagery : Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. For example, “When I see birches bend to left and right”, “To the top branches, climbing carefully” and “And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk.”
• Enjambment : It is defined as a thought or clause that does not come to an end at a line break ; instead, it moves over to the next line. For example,

“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.”

• Hyperbole : Hyperbole is a device used to exaggerate a statement for the sake of emphasis. For example,

“Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust.”

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in “Birches”

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem

• Stanza : A stanza is a set of lines or verses in a poem. ‘Birches’ is a single stanza long free- verse poem with fifty lines without any stanza break.
• Free Verse : Free Verse is a type of poetry that does not contain patterns of rhyme or meter . This is a free-verse poem with no strict rhyme or meter

Quotes to be Used

The lines stated below can be used for children when discussing ‘life’ in rural areas. The description would help them understand the blissful life of those areas.

“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.”

Related posts:

• The Road Not Taken
• Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
• Acquainted with the Night
• Home Burial
• Fire and Ice
• Nothing Gold Can Stay
• The Death of the Hired Man
• The Lady of Shalott
• Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
• Phenomenal Woman
• We Wear the Mask
• The World is Too Much With Us
• The Second Coming
• In Flanders Fields
• A Visit from St. Nicholas
• A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
• Miniver Cheevy
• Old Ironsides
• Not Waving but Drowning
• Auguries of Innocence
• Dover Beach
• Those Winter Sundays
• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
• How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways
• Jabberwocky
• The Bridge Builder
• The Conqueror Worm
• There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• The Highwayman
• Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art
• Lift Every Voice and Sing
• A Noiseless Patient Spider
• The Walrus and the Carpenter
• The Cremation of Sam McGee
• When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
• Ballad of Birmingham
• I Hear America Singing
• Anthem for Doomed Youth
• Sailing to Byzantium
• Of Modern Poetry
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
• Song of the Open Road
• Little Jack Horner
• The Battle Hymn of the Republic
• Little Miss Muffet
• O Me! O Life!
• Wild Nights – Wild Nights
• I Remember, I Remember
• The Albatross
• My Life Had Stood – a Loaded Gun
• The Snow Man
• Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
• Abandoned Farmhouse
• Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
• The Man He Killed
• Abou Ben Adhem
• Verses upon the Burning of Our House
• The Song of Wandering Aengus
• The Little Black Boy
• The Mother 
• Frost at Midnight
• On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
• Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking
• The Convergence of the Twain
• Sunflower Sutra
• Composed upon Westminster Bridge
• Halloween Party
• A Supermarket in California
• Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
• The Sick Rose
• Fra Lippo Lippi
• Speech: “Is this a dagger which I see before me
• Eloisa to Abelard
• The Runaway
• A Line-storm Song
• A Prayer in Spring

Post navigation

• National Poetry Month
• Materials for Teachers
• Literary Seminars
• American Poets Magazine

Main navigation

• Academy of American Poets

User account menu

Find and share the perfect poems.

Page submenu block

• literary seminars
• materials for teachers
• poetry near you

Add to anthology

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.

From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1916, 1923, 1928, 1930, 1934, 1939, 1947, 1949, © 1969 by Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1936, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1951, 1953, 1954, © 1956, 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.

More by this poet

A line-storm song.

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,    The road is forlorn all day,  Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,    And the hoof-prints vanish away.  The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,   Expend their bloom in vain.  Come over the hills and far with me,    And be my love in the rain. 

Not to Keep

They sent him back to her. The letter came Saying... and she could have him. And before She could be sure there was no hidden ill Under the formal writing, he was in her sight— Living.— They gave him back to her alive— How else? They are not known to send the dead— And not disfigured visibly. His face?—

A Time to Talk

When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk, I don’t stand still and look around On all the hills I haven’t hoed, And shout from where I am, What is it? No, not as there is a time to talk. I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground, Blade-end up and five feet tall,

Newsletter Sign Up

• Academy of American Poets Newsletter
• Academy of American Poets Educator Newsletter
• Teach This Poem

Critical analysis of Frost’s “Birches”

In the poem “Birches” we come across Frost’s desire to withdraw from the world as also his love of the earth as symbolized by the boy’s game of swinging birches. The central thought of this poem is that the poet dreams of becoming a swinger o birches once again in his life as he was during his boyhood.

Frost’s central subject is humanity, and aliveness because it expresses living people. Other poets have written about people. But Robert frost’s poems are of the people and somewhat different. People in Frost’s poem work, walk about, and converse, and tell their tales with the freedom of common speech. “Birches” is among Frost best-known piece and has acquired wide popularity. What places the poem on a distinctly high level of appeal is the true and broad humanity running throughout the poem . In the background of the swinging birches, the imaginary boy’s behaviour and utterances acquire a philosophical depth and wisdom.

In “Birches”, the poet is weary of considerations that his life involves but he does not want to escape from his life on earth. He wants to become a swinger of birches at least for the time being. It is not the feeling of escapism that forms the central thought of “Birches” but love for the earth. Although the poet may like to withdraw from the cares and anxieties of the life on the earth, he cannot entertain the idea of relinquishing the earth forever. Frost was no mystic and perhaps no poem is more expressive of his thought than Birches. Elizabeth Jennings has pointed out, ‘in Birches he declares “Earth the right place for love,” and goes on to describe his own preponderance for the immediate tangible world, and his ability to manage without too much consideration of transcendental things.

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.

The way in which the theme is rendered is dramatic. The sudden shifts in the imagery and the warmth of the humanly element in it give the poem a dramatic force and intensity. However the poem cannot be describe as a dramatic monologue , despite the dramatic the theme is treated here in elaborate canvas. “Birches” is one of those poems in which we find a sustained movement of sense, feeling and rhythm from beginning to end. Brower has rightly remarked about “Birches” and “The Census-Taker” ‘Frost offers a sure standard of achieved form in poetry of talk in an extended nature lyric Birch or in a country walker’s narrative like “The Census-Taker”.’ The evolution of feeling and reflection in these poems is carried forward unerringly through masterly variation of blank verse rhythm . Both poems start from vivid perceptions of natural or at least country things and both dramatize a person discovering new meanings or new puzzles in that situation.” The poem “Birches” begins in the tune of easy conversation.

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.

Some critics like Alvarez deny Frost the title of “nature poet” and would regard him as rural or country poet. Undoubtedly Robert Frost’s poetry has an agrarian bias to is the poetry of a countryman for the countryman. “He is a country poet, whose business is to live with nature rather than through it.” He wishes to carry us off to agrarian world from the choking modern city. He is essentially a poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens, groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, seeds and birds. To him “Wood are lovely, dark and deep and Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it’s likely to go better. l’dlike 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.

Frost has a tendency to philosophize but is free from didacticism . It has been explained by Lewis in these words, “He is a serious moralist as well as a serious artist But his peculiar intimacy with nature prevents him from being openly didactic: He teaches, like nature, in parables: sometimes merely presenting a picture, a mood , a narrative , and leaving you to draw your own conclusions, never permitting himself more than the tender, humorous sort of comment we find at the end of ‘Birches’:

I’d like to get away from earth a while And then come back to it and begin over. may no fate wilfully misunderstand me And half grand 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 language used is usually simple and clear. Some of its lines have epigrammatic force and terseness. The poem is remarkable for the poet’s mastery over blank verse too. The poem is written in a very simple and clear language and conversational style . Some of its line shaves epigrammatic force and terseness.

The poem consists of a series of beautiful pictures of nature and of man, and each sketch is hit off in a few happy touches, and is complete in itself. The swinging of the birches tossed by the ice-storms, and looked on at by a boy, in the early hours of the day, till

the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells. Shattering and avalanching ont he snow-crust- Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

makes a genuine appeal. It is a striking picture of nature and of man rendered in terms of prominent imagery , an imagery that combines both fact and fancy. The second picture in the poem is that of the trees with “their trunks arching in the woods”. The ruffled atmosphere of the swinging birches is compared here to-

girls on hands and knees that throw their hair. Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

There is a striking between the images, arching trees and the girls in disheveled hair, and each image renders the other more prominent. In the main the poem seems to be narrative or descriptive in intent. The philosophical statement at the end of the poem serves as finale to a series of picture which are significant for their shrewd turns.”

C.D. Lewis makes the following comment on its rhythm – the upward and downward movement of the rhythm fully reflects the going upto and coming down of the swinger of birches. But when the poet moralizes the rhythm becomes slow.”

About the imagery of the poem Prof. Saxena writes “The crystal ice becomes heaps of broken glass which is compared to the inner dome of heaven. The arched trees are transformed into girls on hands and knees – the girls who throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun. The country boy ‘whose only play was what he found himself’, riding and subduing his father’s birches becomes the mature poet. One has just to quote a few lines to show the vividness and power of Frost’s imagery :

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust Such heaps of broken glass away You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen

Frost does not see the country with the eyes of the carefree vagabond or the city stick romantic who finds it as charming and refreshing as a new mistress. He has for it rather the understanding, slightly quizzical look a man given the wife of him bosom.

It is no spirit of nature which sends Frost’s rain or wind; he neither sees in the natural world the pervading spirit Wordsworth saw…. the mountain is not a personality as it is for Wordsworth in the “Prelude” and in other poems” Frost did not idealize or glorify the objects of nature. He saw them as things with which and on which man acts in course of the daily work of gaining a livelihood. He rarely makes his lessen or his philosophy of nature as overt and obvious as Wordsworthian simplicity of style in his descriptions of Nature. In his poem Birches, we find Frost’s capacity for minute description and accurate description at their best and the opening lines of the poem are a characteristic example of the same. He gives here a smile, concrete description of the “habits” of birches and the changes wrought upon them by wind and ice storms. Young boys who swing on them.

When I see briches bend to heft and right Across the linesof straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. But swinging does’t bend them down to stay. Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain They click upon themselves As the breezae rises, and turned many-coloured As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Frost’s accuracy of description is, accompanied by delicacy of feeling aid imagination.. In the words of Untermever, “Birches”, one of Robert Frost’s most widely quoted poems, beautifully illustrates the poet’s power, the power to blend observation and imagination. He begins in tone of easy conversation:

When I see briches bend to left and right Across the lines of starighter darker trees…

and them, without warning or change of tone , the reader is arrested by a whimsical image, and the fact turns into a fancy. “I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. Fact and fancy play together throughout the poem . The crystal ice becomes heaps of broken glass. “You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.” The arched trees are transformed into girls on hands and knees “That how their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun.” The country boy, whose only play was what he found himself, “riding and subduing his father’s birches, becomes the mature poet who announces:

Earth’s the right place for love; I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

Though Frost is regarded preeminently as a poet of nature, man holds a more important place in his poetry than nature. He himself was conscious of the fact when he said, ‘I guess I’m not a nature poet have written two poems without a human being in them.” Contrasting Frost’s attitude towards nature with that of Wordsworth’s Murion Montgomery has rightly pointed out, From the publication of “A Boy’s Will down” to the present time Frost has indicated a realization that man can serve important part of this Universe.

“Birches” by Robert Frost

“Birches” by Robert Frost is a nostalgic poem filled with fond memories and fantasies, yet at the same time the speaker reveals his longing to escape. Frost sets up a conversation with himself using dialogue between his sensible, knowing self and his fantasizing, nostalgic self. At first the poem seems to be just an account for all of the birches leaning with none standing straight. Frost would like to think that a child at play bent the trees, probably to escape the truth that nature destroys itself.

The idea of trees being bent by ice and snow is much less romantic than the idea of a young boy enjoying himself, teaching himself some lessons about Physics and life . This idea of nature’s self-destruction is one that isn’t often addressed in our time, since most destruction to nature is blamed on humans and pollution. Frost, being a man of the country, realizes that nature often destroys itself, but he wants to imagine a different cause for the leaning branches.

The speaker’s fantasy offers him a way to make some good come out of the injury to the branches, thereby allowing himself to recollect his past as a boy swinging from branch to branch. This fantasy also allows the speaker, not Frost, to escape from the reality of the destruction of the earth. For these reasons, this poem illustrates the battle of the speaker between the youthful thoughts of fantasy and the older, more plausible, facts of reality.

The description of the boy swing from branch to branch could also be construed as a metaphor: a boy’s actions swinging from birches represents his learning through feeling out situations and making mistakes while growing. Of course, a boy will learn of balance and heights while climbing trees, but there is an underlying admission that he is growing up. Frost uses the natural side of things in climbing trees to parallel growing up and becoming a man.

The description of the boy at play, “He learned all there was/To learn about not launching out too soon”, “climbing carefully”; “Kicking his way down through the air to the ground” shows many traits of learning through experience . The clever choice of words in “with the same pains you use to fill a cup” he prompts the reader to remember the pain of growing up with all of the new challenges and tasks associated with growing up.

Because of Frost’s commitment to using nature to help people explore them, it is not surprising that the most frequent methods in his attempt to deal with this nature-spirit dualism is the juxtaposition of reality and fantasy. The speaker also relates the stages of life and tot he season of nature. He/she makes several references to what happens during the ongoing course of the seasons within the first twenty-two lines. The speaker draws us into his observation the trees “you must have see them / Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning / After a rain” and adds that “once they are bowed / So low so long, they never right themselves.

The speaker is revealing only the scientific aspect of this phenomenon. After he points out that the trees will be bent over the years, there is a major transition in the speaker’s way of thinking. he turned to his imagination again to provide the explanation he prefers. The idea of fantasy is introduced, and it is revealed that this aspect is much more favorable for the speaker when he/she says “I should prefer. ” The second part of “Birches” deals with a fantasy that is common to most of mankind; a longing to start over again.

It is common to hear someone wish to start over again for countless reasons. Here Frost uses the simile “And life is too much like a pathless wood” to acknowledge that life can lead a person to feel lost. “Pathless wood” illustrates confusion, whereas “one eye weeping from a twig” illustrates the sadness that comes from life’s adversity. In saying, “I’d like to get away from earth for a while” Frost expresses a desire for an escape not necessarily via death, but perhaps through fantasy where he may start over again.

He quickly addresses the idea of fate and explains that he doesn’t want his wish “half ” granted; he does not want to die; he only wants to go back to a time when life was care free and easy. His wish “to get away from earth awhile” is not a death wish. Frost’s love of life and the absence of gloom in this particular work illustrate that he simply wants a better place to be, a place where reality and stress can disappear for awhile. The conclusion of the poem is confusing because it is difficult for the reader to understand why the speaker claims, “That would be good both going and coming back.

He could mean the feeling of free falling with the climax of springing upward, or he could refer to belief that one-day he will be reincarnated. In any case, he wished he could escape the pressures of everyday life by living or at least visiting the fantasy world he/she has created. This fantasy world is one which children in every day life create, and in which the speaker cane remember creating several years ago. The personal aspect of the poem starts in line forty-one. The speaker takes the reader back with him in his/her flashback to childhood and the years of being “a swinger of birches.

The speaker lets the reader know the fantasy world he pictured and revealed was one that he had experiences as a child; one which he can remember the carefree feeling of being a child. “Too far from town to learn baseball” he used to “subdue his father’s trees / By riding them down over and over again / Until he took the stiffness out of them. ” His imagination has survived the stressful adulthood that fact points to the antecedent scenario: a vision of birches reaches out to relieve his stress and reawakens his store of memories mixed with his fantasies of life.

To export a reference to this essay please select a referencing style below:

Related essays:

• Robert Frost
• The Road Not Taken Essay
• The Psychology of Robert Frosts Nature Poetry
• Robert Frost – one of America’s best poets of his generation
• Robert Frost, Perhaps The Greatest American Poet
• The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
• The Oven Bird – Compared to 4 Other Poems
• Interpretations of Frost
• Robert Frost – Imagery in his Poetry
• Five Great Pieces of Thought
• Fire And Ice – Compared To 4 Other Poems
• Robert Frost1 Essay Examples

Birches Poem Analysis

Introduction, main ideas of the poem, importance of the poet’s claims.

The poetic legacy of Robert Frost, as one of the foremost American poets of the 20th century, is rich and imbued with images and vivid stories. As an example, his poem “Birches” can be analyzed as a work that captivates the reader with its philosophical ideas about eternity and love. The ability to describe nature with the power that is subject to Frost makes the poet a great master of the artistic word and allows asserting about his rich inner world. The purpose of this work is to analyze “Birches” from the standpoint of the key message that the poet puts into the content. The poem in question gives an impetus to the philosophical reflection on the power of love and individual experiences to understand why the impressions of the past shape the personality and determine one’s worldview characteristics.

The analysis of the poem in question allows highlighting the main motives that explain Frost’s desire to describe personal experiences and thoughts about the power of love and its influence on life. The style he adheres to gives him an opportunity to express the ideas comprehensively. Firstly, according to Gale (2016), the blank verse principle is a poetic form that simplifies storytelling and contributes to conveying thoughts without an emphasis on rhyme. Such a tool helps Frost concentrate on the essence of the poem. Secondly, the method of avoiding reality, which reinforces the philosophical implication, makes it possible to create the illusion of spatial reasoning when the poet covers not only the current moment but also other temporal dimensions. In “Birches,” Frost (1969) writes as follows: “You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.” This stanza invites the reader to open wider boundaries of reality and draws him into reasoning both in the context of earthly life and beyond it. Gale (2017) notes that such an approach is a symbolic tool for expanding the scope of consciousness. As a result, the poet embraces different dimensions for his philosophical analysis.

The theme of love touched upon in the poem is the leitmotif, despite the fact that its direct mention is at the end of the poem. According to Frost (1969), “Earth’s the right place for love,” and this thesis reveals the context of the events described. As Parini (2015) states, all of Frost’s works may be described as attempts to comprehend love and help people not to lose it in the challenging world. Not a single person who has experienced this great feeling can deny its power. Therefore, the poet insists that, although “life is too much like a pathless wood,” the connection with the past and experienced feelings should not be lost (Frost 1969). The temporal dimensions presented in the poem, particularly childhood and adulthood, are intertwined, which creates a unity of images and the inseparability of different periods from each other. This approach to assessing human nature allows the poet to emphasize that life is not long and carefree. Challenges that a person faces on one’s way can weaken or upset. However, the power of love that everyone is able to experience can soothe and empower.

The descriptions of birches with their ice-covered branches are the personification of human maturation. Frost (1969) writes as follows: “They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load.” This image of trees that lean to the ground and freeze under the influence of external forces is comparable to human feelings that harden over time due to the difficulties and anxieties of real life. However, as Sharhan (2017) notes, the key idea is not why these trees tend to the ground but how one can revive them and shake off the ice. The poet argues that while returning to his childhood, he could swing birches and experience the solemn feelings of freedom and lightness (Frost 1969). In real life, the image of trees describes people who, as they get older, lose their carelessness and open love and turn to stone in difficult living conditions. However, no one should forget that the true power of love can melt any ice and revive a person’s essence in the same way as a child swinging on a birch does. Thus, references to nature are the tools of comparison that Frost utilizes successfully.

Life experience seen as one of the drivers of human feelings is also involved as an important element that determines the degree of love that an individual can feel. The poet himself states that his riding on birches evokes only positive emotions, and he dreams of repeating this experience: “It’s when I’m weary of considerations” (Frost 1969). He realizes that while returning to childhood and abstracting from daily routine and worries, a person can control one’s destiny and experience the same vivid feelings as before. Love, as one of the strongest manifestations of spiritual nature, can sparkle with new colors if a person allows oneself to forget about adulthood as a restriction and perceive the world positively and gaily. Despite the fact that, as Parini (2015) remarks, Frost grew up in a materially-minded family with a serious father, the poet has managed to retain the memories of the most vivid moments of his childhood. This experience conveys the main message of “Birches,” which is the importance of remembering how love can inspire a person and break the ice in the heart due to the awakening of deep feelings.

The importance of Frost’s ideas expressed in “Birches” is justified by the shift of social interests and values ​​in favor of materiality and financial well-being. Love, as one of the strongest feelings, began to lose its significance under the influence of selfish goals that drive the actions of modern people. Today, when humanity has achieved great results in the development of the technological industry, the capitalist form of consciousness dominates over the ethical one. In such conditions, love recedes into the background and gives way to convenience and profit. This, in turn, creates obstacles to normal human interaction based on adherence to the principles of morality. Moreover, constant tension felt in the endless pursuit of well-being complicates life and leaves an imprint on the way of thinking, which transforms and becomes rational but not creative. All these factors hinder what Frost discusses, in particular, the ability to enjoy the pleasure that is available to everyone. Therefore, the value of the poem’s central idea can be explained from the perspective of its potentially positive influence on the way of thinking to release one’s consciousness from unnecessary worries and concerns.

The ability to understand how past experiences shape the human personality and define the boundaries of consciousness is valuable in view of an opportunity to draw the necessary conclusions and change the worldview. According to Sharhan (2017), closeness to nature is a factor that drives experience and determines how the environment influences consciousness. Although Parini (2015, 69) remarks that “one must be careful when using poems, which are constructs of the imagination,” Frost’s images convey the essence of his ideas explicitly. In pursuit of happiness, a person forgets about one’s past and carelessness, which, in turn, allowed expanding the boundaries of morality and ethics. Today, people tend to be guided by rational judgments, which can be effective and reasonable. Nevertheless, despite the existing bias in values, a personal background is essential for understanding what emotions simple and understandable feelings evoke. Love, despite the complexity of its manifestations, is one of the most vivid markers that reflect emotional moods. Thus, the discussion of the topic of experience and its role in human life is a useful incentive to reduce the negative impact of current challenges and concerns on the worldview.

Robert Frost’s poem “Birches” is filled with philosophical discourse about the power of love and the importance of past experience as a stimulus that determines the attitude towards the world. The evaluation of this work allows highlighting the main approaches used by the poet, in particular, the blank verse method to focus on the poem’s content and the personification of images. Birches that are compared to human lives help reveal the key point: as they grow up, people forget about the joy of life and vivid feelings, for instance, love. The importance of understanding these aspects is explained by the shift in values ​​in favor of material goods and an opportunity to find peace of mind due to the assessment of life experience.

Frost, Robert. 1969. “Birches.” Poetry Foundation. Web.

Gale. 2016. A Study Guide for Robert Frost’s “Birches.” Farmington Hills: Cengage Learning.

Parini, Jay. 2015. Robert Frost: A life . New York: Henry Holt and Company.

Sharhan, Ala H. 2017. “Accessing Pastoral Ideologies in R. Frost’s ‘Birches’ via Lexical Tools in Terms of Galperin’s Classification: A Stylistic Study.” Journal of Basra Researches for Human Sciences 42 (4): 372-385.

Cite this paper

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2022, August 23). Birches Poem Analysis. https://studycorgi.com/birches-by-robert-frost-essay-examples/

"Birches Poem Analysis." StudyCorgi , 23 Aug. 2022, studycorgi.com/birches-by-robert-frost-essay-examples/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) 'Birches Poem Analysis'. 23 August.

1. StudyCorgi . "Birches Poem Analysis." August 23, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/birches-by-robert-frost-essay-examples/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Birches Poem Analysis." August 23, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/birches-by-robert-frost-essay-examples/.

StudyCorgi . 2022. "Birches Poem Analysis." August 23, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/birches-by-robert-frost-essay-examples/.

This paper, “Birches Poem Analysis”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: May 9, 2024 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

ROBERT FROST'S BIRCHES: A CRITICAL APPRECIATION

Robert Frost is often considered as the unofficial poet laureate of America. If his poetry showed a distinct love for the rural New England, it was no accident.He started his living as a farmer and craftsman before turning to poetry.So he had the first hand knowledge of farms, fields and the men who toiled in them.He observed them like no one else, presenting their unsung lives with fresh images sprinkled with delightful wisdom. It is often told that a typical Frost poem begins in delight, and ends in wisdom. They start by describing a particular sight or imagery that has caught the poet's attention. Frost goes on to explore the various aspects of it in a light hearted manner and adds his wisdom that makes us view that experience in a different light altogether.This article traces the major hallmarks of Frost's Poetry in one of the more loved poem of his-The Birches.Technical innovations and imagery of the poem is analysed keeping focus on the delightful wisdom that the poem offers.

Related Papers

INDULEKHA K.R

International Research Journal Commerce arts science

The poet/critic Randall Jarrell often praised Frost's poetry and wrote, "Robert Frost, along with Stevens and Eliot, seems to me the greatest of the American poets of this century. Frost's virtues as a poet and artist are extraordinary. No other living poet has written so well about the actions of ordinary men; his wonderful dramatic monologues or dramatic scenes come out of a knowledge of people that few poets have had, and they are written in a verse that uses, sometimes with absolute mastery, the rhythms of actual speech‖. Robert Frost loved nature. His poetry was full of emotional appearances about his personal life and behavior. In addition, his literary verses are uncomplicated and profound. He also wrote plain fictions about common people, usually inhabitants of rustic New England. Robert Frost wrote exceptional prose, applying ordinary and sincere language; his poems enclose concept of symbolism, obscure significances, sounds, rhyme, meter, metaphors and more. Robert Frost was, quite simply, one of America's leading 20 th century poets. It could be because he wrote poems about rural life drawing a distinct contrast between its innocence and peacefulness and the depression and corruption of city life. It could also be because he used traditional verse forms that were understood by one and all. It might even be that people sensed his step forward in the direction of modernizing the interplay of rhythm and meter while writing exactly how people spoke. His poetry has been called traditional, experimental, regional, universal, and even pastoral. The world of Frost's poetry is beautiful but it is also harsh and uncaring. Frost wrote that, ―Man has need of nature, but nature has no need of man‖. The poem Birches contains the image of slender trees bent to the ground temporally by a boy's swinging on them or permanently by an ice storm. But as the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that the speaker is concerned not only with child's play and natural phenomena, but also with the point at which physical and spiritual reality merge: ― I like to think some boy's been swinging them But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice – storms do‖

Jendral Besar

International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies

International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is a famous American Poet. As most of his poems are autobiographical in subject, it is evident that he has been mostly influenced by the environment around him in composing his masterpieces. Frost’s themes are very simple in the surface meaning endowed with an easily understandable diction and a liberal style of writing. Yet, a careful study of his works vividly reveals his greatness as a ‘true’ judge of various critical aspects associated with the everyday experiences of the humans. His major characters- the narrators in “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, “Mending wall” and “The Road not Taken” are viewed as the real people with real struggles in real life. It is seen that Frost’s poetry is highly connotative and the same reader can interpret the poetry of Robert Frost in multiple ways in multiple settings. The present article aims at critically examining Frost’s ‘realistic’ and ‘rationalistic’ approaches in the elevation of human nature under the broad spectrum of human life. This article also aims at proving that no poem of Frost ends in an absolute imagination because Frost himself seems to believe in realism as the ultimate fate of the individuals though fancy and imagination provides a temporary relief to the disturbed soul.

SMART M O V E S J O U R N A L IJELLH

Robert Lee Frost is one of the major American poets, born on 26thof March in 1874 in San Francisco. He is also known as the New England poet. He is rewarded four times Pulitzer Prize. Through the medium of his poetry Frost tried to spread awareness among human beings towards our environment and this message he conveyed beautifully through the medium of poetry. He dictates that nature is harsh and indifferent towards man and man should accept the troubles thrown by nature. Whatever we do, it directly affects our environment. He suggests that we must not afraid of failure and defeats. We take from nature in abundance and return to it very little. So, he makes us aware that we must be Eco-friendly and must be aware of what is hidden in the lap of nature which oureyes are unable to perceive but which we can comprehend through our common sense. Key Words: Environment, Nature, Materialism, Technology, Exploitation, Science

Journal of English Linguistics 30.1: 73-90

Margaret Freeman

Journal of English Linguistics

TJPRC Publication

The world of nature is very important to study of Frost's poetry. By using nature as a background of his poems, Frost clearly demonstrates meaning and values of life and often depicts some treatment of nature and the social situation that have included a characteristic portrayal of humanity. This study enables us to understand Frost's poetical theme and values that would explain his hidden voice of nature and examines human inner mind, exposing its conflicts and harmony through it. Some critics have identified him as a terrifying poet and others labeled him a pessimistic poet or, a dark naturalist. However, he has a constant vision of nature throughout the poems. More than anything else, the speaker of his poems uses sign and symbol of nature that take an identity of others. Furthermore, this study discusses his series of concrete images which echo his poetry and intensify clarification of human life on the conceptions of the world of nature.

Ahmad Mahbub-ul-Alam , Tasmia Moslehuddin

Nature has often been one of the prominent themes in literature. It has been the topic of celebration by the Romantics to have a way out from the hectic business of city life. On the other hand, the adaptation of the same subject has also been observed by the Modern poets to put emphasis on the realities and responsibilities of human existence. This paper aims at making a comparative study in the presentation of “Nature” by William Wordsworth, an English Romantic and Robert Frost, a Modern American.

Abhishek Solomon

WILLIAM AND ROBERT

RELATED PAPERS

Florina Jerliu

Maurice Yolles

Heba Nassar

Neuropsychopharmacology

Carlos Andres Bernal Aragon

Shanta Dutta

Valeria Elichiry

Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal

Goutam Sadhu

JPBI (Jurnal Pendidikan Biologi Indonesia)

Topik Hidayat

Green Chemistry

Yerbol Sagatov

Archives de Pédiatrie

Hubert Ythier

Engineering in Agriculture, Environment and Food

USMAN ISMAIL AHMAD

estefania mico

Medical news of the North Caucasus

Fatima Datieva

Colloquium Mathematicum

Leonardo Colzani

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Carmen Flores

hjjhgj kjghtrg

Universal Journal of Public Health

e-Business and Telecommunication Networks

Victor Garcia

Walter Homolka

Ciencia & saude coletiva

Pedro R Jacobi

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Undergraduate
• High School
• Architecture
• American History
• Asian History
• Antique Literature
• American Literature
• Asian Literature
• Classic English Literature
• World Literature
• Creative Writing
• Linguistics
• Criminal Justice
• Legal Issues
• Anthropology
• Archaeology
• Political Science
• World Affairs
• African-American Studies
• East European Studies
• Latin-American Studies
• Native-American Studies
• West European Studies
• Family and Consumer Science
• Social Issues
• Women and Gender Studies
• Social Work
• Natural Sciences
• Pharmacology
• Earth science
• Agriculture
• Agricultural Studies
• Computer Science
• IT Management
• Mathematics
• Investments
• Engineering and Technology
• Engineering
• Aeronautics
• Medicine and Health
• Alternative Medicine
• Communications and Media
• Advertising
• Communication Strategies
• Public Relations
• Educational Theories
• Teacher's Career
• Chicago/Turabian
• Company Analysis
• Education Theories
• Shakespeare
• Canadian Studies
• Food Safety
• Relation of Global Warming and Extreme Weather Condition
• Movie Review
• Admission Essay
• Annotated Bibliography
• Application Essay

Article Critique

• Article Review
• Article Writing
• Book Review
• Business Plan
• Business Proposal
• Capstone Project
• Cover Letter
• Creative Essay
• Dissertation
• Dissertation - Abstract
• Dissertation - Conclusion
• Dissertation - Discussion
• Dissertation - Hypothesis
• Dissertation - Introduction
• Dissertation - Literature
• Dissertation - Methodology
• Dissertation - Results
• GCSE Coursework
• Grant Proposal
• Marketing Plan
• Multiple Choice Quiz
• Personal Statement
• Power Point Presentation
• Power Point Presentation With Speaker Notes
• Questionnaire
• Reaction Paper

Research Paper

• Research Proposal
• SWOT analysis
• Thesis Paper
• Online Quiz
• Literature Review
• Movie Analysis
• Statistics problem
• Math Problem
• All papers examples
• How It Works
• Money Back Policy
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• We Are Hiring

Birches by Robert Frost, Essay Example

Pages: 2

Words: 617

Hire a Writer for Custom Essay

Use 10% Off Discount: "custom10" in 1 Click 👇

You are free to use it as an inspiration or a source for your own work.

Relationship of Man and Nature in Birches by Robert Frost

‘ Birches’ is one of the poems written by Robert Frost in the early 20 th century. Referring to Frost’s early poems sometimes seems challenging due to their nature the thematic intentions by the poet when he wrote the poems. ‘Birches’ is a poem that Frost wrote mainly to bring to the readers the concept of science in the society. In order to do this well, Robert Frost used other themes such as nature in relation to human in the poem. In the early days of 19 th century, Robert Frost was mainly concerned with ensuring perfection of what he referred to as “the sound of sense” (Fagan 37). In the poem ‘Birches’, the relationship between man and nature has been well illustrated either directly or using certain literary devices such as symbolism and irony. This paper examines the aforementioned theme as depicted in the poem.

Nature is one of the elements predominantly featured in ‘Birches’ and the poem include certain moments of encounter or interaction between a natural object or human speaker. The first three stanzas of the poem depicts nature as related to people. The persona says, “I like to think that some boys have been swinging them. But…” (Frost; Line 3-4). In this excerpt, the persona refers to the birches that have been bent to the right and left.  Birches are nature in the making but the fact that they swung is an indication of some level of human influence in them. The persona tends to find out the existing connection or relationship between the birches and the boys. Birch is a broadleaved hard wood tree that is deciduous in nature. Their ending is not natural and is seen to be influenced by human. In this case, the poet has employed the use of birches as symbolism to elaborate on how nature and human relate.

Like many other poems by Robert Frost, ‘Birches’ focuses on the act of discovery and Frost ensures demonstration of how human-nature engagement leads to self-discovery, knowledge and growth among people (Fagan 69). For example, the persona talks of climbing the birch tree towards the end of the poem to remove stiffness of the tree branches for other uses. “Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground ” (Frost; Line 28-29). Here it is evidenced that Frost engages the readers of his poem to understand how human gained nature helped people gain knowledge during his time. In particular, he depicts the existence of an important relationship between nature and man.

Despite the fact that human depended on nature to make some beneficial discoveries, Frost makes it clear to the readers that nature is not concerned with human’s achievement, discoveries or miseries. In short, between nature and man, only man is aware that nature benefits him and not vice versa. He uses personification to show how ice affects trees. “ Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning. After a rain, they click upon themselves ” (Frost; Line6-7). In essence, he tries to show the readers that ice affects the comfort of birches, and the birches are not concerned with the human interests but their own.

As stated before, nature is a crucial theme in most of Frost’s poems. He describes the origin of human knowledge using nature. His poems reveal that science originated from the interaction between nature and man. The poem, ‘Birches’ is one of the poems showing the relationship between human and nature as described above.

Works Cited

Fagan, Deirdre J. Critical Companion to Robert Frost: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work . New York: Facts on File, 2007. Internet resource.

Frost, Robert. Birches . New York, NY: Henry Holt, 2002. Print.

Stuck with your Essay?

Get in touch with one of our experts for instant help!

Louisa May Alcott, Research Paper Example

Promoting Innovation in Hospitality Companies, Article Critique Example

Time is precious

don’t waste it!

Plagiarism-free guarantee

Privacy guarantee

Secure checkout

Money back guarantee

Related Essay Samples & Examples

Voting as a civic responsibility, essay example.

Pages: 1

Words: 287

Utilitarianism and Its Applications, Essay Example

Words: 356

The Age-Related Changes of the Older Person, Essay Example

Words: 448

The Problems ESOL Teachers Face, Essay Example

Pages: 8

Words: 2293

Should English Be the Primary Language? Essay Example

Pages: 4

Words: 999

The Term “Social Construction of Reality”, Essay Example

Words: 371

Aeon Video has a monthly newsletter!

Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.

Robert Frost’s poetic reflection on youth, as read in his unforgettable baritone

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

In ‘Birches’ (1915), the US poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) ponders the nature of unusually low tree branches, recognising that they must have been sunken by ice storms, but preferring to believe that they’ve been bent by the carefree swinging of children at play. From this imagery, he contrasts the rational and world-weary tendencies of adults with the unbridled freedom of youth. In this reading of the poem by Frost at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1955, his aged, emotive baritone pairs perfectly with his striking imagery and wistful words. Featuring audio first digitised by the MET in 2020, this visual adaptation pairs Frost’s reading of one of his most celebrated works with woodland footage and apt imagery from the museum’s collection.

Video by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Director: Stephanie Wuertz

Sex and sexuality

After a sextortion scam, Eugene conducts an unblushing survey of masturbation

Film and visual culture

‘Bags here are rarely innocent’ – how filmmakers work around censorship in Iran

Language and linguistics

Closed captions suck. Here’s one artist’s inventive project to make them better

Architecture

The celebrated architect who took inspiration from sitting, waiting and contemplating

Anthropology

Why are witchcraft accusations so common across human societies?

Subcultures

Drop into London’s eclectic skate scene, where newbies and old-timers find community

Technology and the self

A deepfake porn victim confronts the pain of having her likeness stolen and vandalised

Born in China, Zee seeks a gender-affirming life in the American Midwest

Rituals and celebrations

A whale hunt is an act of prayer for an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Birches — Main Idea Of Birches by Robert Frost

Main Idea of Birches by Robert Frost

• Categories: Birches Robert Frost

About this sample

Words: 1952 |

10 min read

Published: Nov 8, 2019

Words: 1952 | Pages: 4 | 10 min read

Considerations of Craft

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1366 words

3 pages / 1360 words

2 pages / 855 words

4 pages / 1774 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Birches

Just like Robert Frost, everyone attaches memories to certain people, places and things throughout a lifetime, some memories that even allow a departure to a time that could be seen as much easier and more tranquil that current [...]

In Beowulf and Beroul's The Romance of Tristan, the heroes Beowulf and Tristan are magnificent fighters. Their numerous victories against seemingly insurmountable odds and powerful enemies are testaments to their battle-talents. [...]

The poem Beowulf was written between the 8th and 10th centuries, a time of great transition. Anglo-Saxons still dominated England, and Christianity had only come to the region one hundred or so years before. Although the new [...]

The epic poem Beowulf highlights the role of God as a guiding protector who provides earthly wealth and well-being to the people of 6th century Denmark and Sweden. Beowulf and his people worship a pagan god who serves to [...]

Beowulf, as a character, is often described as the original model for the hero found in literature from antiquity to the modern day. New interpretations of the text, however, focus more on Beowulf the man rather than Beowulf the [...]

James Earl argued that Beowulf should be read in context of historical and external knowledge. He calls this method intertextuality, whose benefits are unlimited. Intertextuality gives the reader a heightened sense of genre, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

“You Want to Possess the Words”: Jay Parini on Why We Can’t Stop Reading Robert Frost

Robert Frost in 1943 (Eric Schaal / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty Images)

More so than with almost any other American poet, Robert Frost’s lines have a way of getting stuck in your head. Whether encountered in a school assignment or a dramatic reading in a movie , his voice strikes your ear with the familiar sound of vernacular speech, then burrows deeper, becoming stranger and more complex the more you mull it. Months or years later, his words might bubble up in your mind unbidden, somehow richer and more meaningful than you remember.

Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart by Jay Parini

As Jay Parini, Frost biographer and author of the recently published Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart , noted in a recent LOA LIVE event , “Frost gives us a language that’s appropriate to our experience again and again.” Not just the grandfatherly figure of a bygone pastoral New England that he cultivated in his public persona, Frost was also a writer of immense but understated wisdom and intricacy, equally capable of rendering sublime scenes of nature and humbler portraits of human grief in his poems. Even his shortest works are worlds within worlds, spinning out fresh revelations with each re-reading and encouraging us to make them a permanent part of our inner lives.

Below, Parini talks about the benefits of memorizing verse, why one critic famously called Frost “a terrifying poet,” and where to turn next once you’ve committed your first sixteen poems to heart.

LOA: Many readers encounter Frost for the first time as students through works such as “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Less Traveled.” What makes his poetry worth returning to?

Jay Parini: Frost always thrills attentive readers with his gorgeous phrasing and perfect timing in the poems. I find myself dazzled and surprised by even the old chestnuts again and again. There are depths that keep yielding new insights. I never get to the bottom of a Frost poem. He claimed to have an “ulteriority complex,” and that is what makes the work so strangely open to new readings.

LOA: You’ve taught Frost for many years. What has that been like?

JP: I’ve taught Frost to thousands of students over fifty years of college teaching. They’re almost always hooked, impressed by his memorable language, his deeply human way of engaging a reader. “Home Burial,” for instance, always shocks students. But especially “Out, Out—” never fails to elicit a gasp from first-time readers. That ending shakes them to the core: “No more to build on there. / And they, who were not the ones dead / Turned to their affairs.”

LOA: In your introduction, you speak about the value of memorizing a poem. “A good poem is a prayer,” you say, “and—like prayer itself—it brings us into conversation with eternity.”

JP: Memorization is what brings me to the language of the poems in the middle of the night, on a long drive, on a run through the woods. You don’t want the interference of a cell phone. You want to possess the words, to own them. Only memorizing a poem will offer that.

Think about actors. They get used to memorizing vast passages. It’s not hard. You just read it aloud again and again, then—like an actor in rehearsal—you go “off-book,” recite. You fail, then try again. It only takes a few times and you have it.

Robert Frost in 1941 (Library of Congress)

LOA: Frost did not achieve public recognition until he was almost forty, and yet today he is among the most well-known and widely read poets in English. How would you summarize Frost’s literary trajectory? 

JP: Frost isn’t a poet who has much of an arc. From start to last, he’s Frost. Maybe during the Great Depression you get a few poems keyed to the era: “Two Tramps,” “Provide, Provide,” “New Hampshire.” For the most part, there isn’t a lot of development, although a late poem, “Directive,” is a kind of summary work, one that brings all his gifts to bear in one long poem of extraordinary depth.

Memorization is what brings me to the language of the poems in the middle of the night, on a long drive, on a run through the woods.

I don’t like much of the very late work: it’s often jokey and not like the great poems. But he started with such a bang, with North of Boston . Hard to beat that.

Frost is one of the three great modern American poets: Eliot, Stevens, and Frost. Frost is the most American of them all, focused on the speech and people of New England. I think you’d find that Frost’s voice has quietly rippled through poets of great strength, such as Richard Wilbur or Seamus Heaney. Heaney was a close friend of mine, and he told me that Frost was probably his main influence.

LOA: Speaking at Frost’s eighty-fifth birthday celebration, the critic Lionel Trilling said (to Frost’s surprise and displeasure), “I regard Robert Frost as a terrifying poet.” It’s an often-quoted observation. What did Trilling mean by that, and why did Frost take offense?

JP: I think Frost was afraid of his dark side. He waited a long time for the acclaim that came in abundance in his later years. He was a wisecracking, avuncular figure on the platform, and he gave endless readings to large crowds. They didn’t want to be frightened by poetry. As a result, he never read aloud certain amazing poems, such as “The Subverted Flower.” He tended to read more cozy poems, such as “Mending Wall” and “The Road Not Taken” or “Birches.”

But it’s hard to go very far into Frost without seeing the dark side, as in “Acquainted with the Night,” “Provide, Provide,” or “Design,” which contains the line: “What but design of darkness to appall?” His best work is chilling. There’s not much comfort in Frost, although nature does speak to him, and to us, through him. And there is some assurance there.

Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays

LOA: It must have been difficult whittling down Frost’s oeuvre to sixteen poems to present in this book. What narrowly missed the cut?

JP: Frost left behind fifty or so great poems. I hated to lose “Provide, Provide,” “The Subverted Flower,” “The Most of It,” “The Silken Tent,” and so forth. All great poems. But I went with the most obvious and most popular of his poems. The essential poems.

Readers looking for more should simply see Library of America’s collected Frost edition and live in the pages, even the letters and essays.  Frost was a splendid writer of essays. “The Figure a Poem Makes” needs to be read.   

Jay Parini, the D. E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, is a poet, novelist, biographer, and critic. He is the author of Robert Frost: A Life , Why Poetry Matters , and Borges and Me: An Encounter , among many other works of nonfiction. His books of poetry include New and Collected Poems , 1975–2015 and The Art of Subtraction .

Related News & Views

“Away from the Crowd”: Dan Barry on the Iconoclastic Genius of Jimmy Breslin

Commitment, Capacity, Compassion: Kim E. Nielsen on American Icon Helen Keller

“Calling It an ‘Adventure’ Would Be Redundant”: Novelist Percival Everett on His Explosive Reimagining of Huckleberry Finn

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.

Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter and receive a coupon for 10% off your first LOA purchase. Discount offer available for first-time customers only.

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Benefits of Using Safe Crypto Casinos. One of the most captivating reasons people drift towards Australian casinos online-casino-au com is the promise of anonymity. Safe platforms guarantee that your identity remains a secret. Quick Payouts and Minimal Fees. No one likes waiting, especially for winnings. Safe crypto casinos ensure that payouts are swift and the fees minimal, if not non-existent.

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come. Ozwin Casino offers an exciting array of top-notch slots that cater to every player's preferences. From classic fruit machines to cutting-edge video slots, Ozwin Casino Real Money collection has it all. With stunning graphics, immersive themes, and seamless gameplay, these slots deliver an unparalleled gaming experience. Some popular titles include Mega Moolah, Gonzo's Quest, and Starburst, known for their massive jackpots and thrilling bonus features. Ozwin Casino's slots are not just about luck; they offer hours of entertainment and the chance to win big, making it a must-visit for slot enthusiasts.