Dec 28, 2009

Birches | Summary

"Birches" is a poem of fifty-nine lines without any stanza breaks. However, the poem does contain several sections that move from naturalistic description to a fanciful explanation of why the birches are bowed, and it concludes with philosophical exploration of a person's existence in the world.

Lines 1-4
Frost opens the poem with an image of the birches bent "left and right / across the lines of straighter darker trees" (lines 1-2) and quickly puts forth one explanation for how they got that way: a boy had been swinging on them. Right away, however, he admits this is...