Question

Birches

BY ROBERT FROST
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

1. What does the speaker want to think has caused the birches to bend? What really caused them to bend? Why might the speaker want to believe in the first cause?

2. To what does the speaker compare the ice that falls from the birches? To what does he compare their trunks and leaves? What can you infer about the speaker's regarding the birches? What might the speaker mean when he say that "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches?

3. In this poem, Frost compares life to a pathless wood. Do you think this is an appropriate simile for life? Why or Why not? To what might you compare life?

4. This poem includes examples of onomatopoeia. How, in your opinion, does onomatopoeia contribute to the impact of the poem?

Don't answer if you don't answer. Thanks!

Answer 1

1.When the speaker sees bent birch trees, he likes to think that they are bent because boys have been “swinging” them. He knows that they are, in fact, bent by ice storms. ... He likens birch swinging to getting “away from the earth awhile” and then coming back.

2.You may see their trunks arching in the woods ... I should prefer to have some boy bend them ... One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. ... When the speaker sees bent birch trees, he likes to think that they are bent ... He does not want his wish half- fulfilled—does not want to be left, so to speak, ...

3.In the two similes Frost uses in his poem "Birches," he compares trees that have been permanently bent by the ice-storms of previous years to "girls on hands and knees that throw their hair / Before them over their heads to dry in the sun" and likens difficult hard intense periods in life to 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."

4.For example, bark came about because it mimics the actual sound a dog makes. ... chronicles the death of the legendary King Arthur and includes onomatopoeia. ... the Snow" uses onomatopoeia to depict a girl's thoughts about the effects of snow.