The Poem
“Birches” is an enduringly popular lyric by one of the United States’ most celebrated poets. In fifty-nine lines of blank verse, the poem presents a description of birch trees in a New England countryside, scenes of a boy swinging from these trees, and reflections on the meaning that being “a swinger of birches” has in Robert Frost’s life. He addresses the reader in an informal, conversational manner, using the first person “I” and addressing the reader casually as “you.” Sometimes poets create first-person speakers who are quite different from themselves. In “Birches,” however, Frost seems to be speaking in his own voice: as a grown man who has often observed and mused upon the birch trees he is describing, who remembers swinging from birches as a boy, and who has endured the adult tribulations he discusses late in the poem.
Frost reinforces the effect of conversational informality by casting the poem in continuous form. Rather than dividing the poem into stanzas or other formal sections, Frost presents an unbroken sequence of fifty-nine lines. Within this continuous form, however, Frost does shift his focus and tone, sometimes abruptly, as if he were digressing in a conversation with the reader. In this way, Frost’s major shifts reveal five sections in the poem.
In the brief first section (lines 1-3), Frost muses that when he sees birch trees that are bent over, he “like[s] to think” it is because “some boy’s been swinging them.” Frost quickly rejects this pleasant thought as whimsical and inaccurate, though. In the second section (lines 4-20), he presents a more dismal and realistic explanation: Winter storms coat the birches with a heavy load of ice that causes them to grow in a bent-over position.
In the third section (lines 21-40), however, Frost playfully reverts to his original theory. In contrast to the ice-storm explanation, he “prefer[s]” to develop the myth of a boy who bends down all the birches on his father’s land “by riding them down over and over again.” Toward the end of this section, Frost’s description vividly dramatizes the skill and exhilaration of the boy’s play.
The fourth section (lines 41-49) returns to a tone of burdensome gloom that echoes section 2. Now, however, instead of the birches suffering, it is the poet. Frost reveals that he himself was once “a swinger of birches,” and he ruefully admits that he now dreams of returning to this activity as a release from the worry, confusion, and pain of adult life.
In the fifth section (lines 50-59), Frost ends the poem on a note of hopeful reconciliation. He realizes that he does not wish for a total escape from the earth and the troubles he experiences there, but only for a temporary respite.
Forms and Devices
The key action described in “Birches” consists of swinging free of the constraints of the earth, up toward heaven and through the air, before landing on the ground again. Through his careful organization of imagery, tropes, and myth, Frost designs the poem as a delightful reflection of its content. That is to say, he takes the reader through a series of swings back and forth between earthbound realities and imaginative possibilities.
The first section of the poem, for example, swings from a real image that Frost has observed (birches bent over) to a myth he would like to believe (that the birches are bent because of a boy’s play). In the second section, though, the poem swings back grimly toward reality, as Frost presents dismal images of how ice left by winter storms actually bends the birches:...
(This entire section contains 552 words.)
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“They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load.” Frost also observes ruefully, “once they are bowed/ So low for long, they never right themselves.”
The grim power of reality in the second section seems to inspire Frost to assert the countervailing power of his imagination even more strongly. He thus begins the third section by playfully personifying reality as a rude interrupter that he can easily dismiss: “But I was going to say when Truth broke in/ With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm.” Aware of his own impudence, Frost then imagines a mythical account of how the birches were bent by a boy whose powerful control over reality seems to reflect the power Frost is claiming for his own imagination. The boy “subdued” all his father’s birches into bent-over arches until “not one was left/ For him to conquer.”
Frost swings back to reality in the fourth section through the surprising revelation that he was once himself “a swinger of birches.” The poet has not, however, enjoyed the satisfying mastery over his life that the mythical boy did over his father’s birch trees, and Frost “dream[s] of going back to be” a swinger of birches once again as a release from the cares of adult life.
In the first four sections of the poem, then, Frost seems to be largely concerned with dramatizing the conflict between the harsh limitations of earthbound reality, and the more attractive possibilities of play and the imagination. The images of the last ten lines, however, present a surprising and harmonious synthesis of the two extremes. Frost emphasizes that he is no longer so naïve as to wish for complete escape from the earth and its cares. “Earth’s the right place for love,” he asserts, implying that it need not exist chiefly in heaven or in the imagination. Similarly, he does not take the regressive, whimsical route of imagining that he would swing up and out from a birch tree with the aggressive abandon he had exhibited as a youth. Instead, he imagines the milder pleasures of the gradual climb up the tree “Toward heaven” (not the impossible fantasy of soaring into it) and of the gentle descent as the tree would place him down on the ground. In this way, Frost imagines a birch-swinging experience that “would be good both going and coming back,” without the conflict between imaginative flight and earthly reality that seemed to prevail earlier in the poem.
Historical Context
It's somewhat ironic that "Birches," set in a serene and almost ideal New England countryside, was first published during one of the most destructive wars in history. The poem made its debut in 1915, amidst the chaos of World War I in Europe. Despite the global conflict, "Birches" contains no overt references to the war; it is not a war poem and lacks any clear political commentary. Interestingly, the poem does include various acts of violence, either depicted or suggested, and the language of conquest is notable in its middle section.
Although Frost gained prominence around the end of World War I, he shared little in common with contemporaries like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who also rose to fame during that period. Frost was over a decade older than both poets and did not share the rebellious spirit that drove them to reject traditional forms in favor of what we now call modernist poetics. Influenced by poets such as Baudelaire, author of "Flowers of Evil," and French symbolists like Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarme, Pound and Eliot utilized a rich symbolic vocabulary often drawn from religious or mythological sources. They turned away from traditional verse forms, considering them too rigid and artificial to convey their ideas and emotions. In his early period, Eliot, along with Pound, embraced imagism, a movement that succeeded symbolism and aimed to create striking images with powerful symbolic associations, forming vivid pictures in the reader's mind.
In contrast, Frost remained faithful to earlier traditions. He adhered to regular verse forms and drew inspiration from late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century poets like the English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) and the American poet Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935). Yet, Frost often cited even older influences, such as the American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and the Roman poets Horace and Virgil.
Despite his traditional influences, Frost's language reflected the evolving poetic landscape. He dismissed the stilted, artificial poetry of many nineteenth-century poets (including Robinson) in favor of a language that, despite using words like "e'en" and "twere," resembled everyday speech. His portrayals of the natural world combined vivid imagery with complex symbols, embodying his moral convictions. While most of his poems do not directly address the political and historical realities of their time (only later in life, as Frost became a prominent public figure, does his poetry begin to reflect these aspects), and despite their traditional forms, they remain deeply connected to their era.
Media Adaptations
A videocassette titled New England in Autumn (1998), distributed by Monterey Home Video, features footage of Robert Frost's homes in New England along with readings of his poetry.
Another video, Robert Frost (1988), contains interviews with poets such as Seamus Heaney and includes a dramatic reading by Joan Allen of one of Frost's poems.
Henry Holt & Co. has created an interactive computer resource on CD, Robert Frost: Poems, Life, Legacy (1998). This resource offers an interactive documentary, 1,500 pages of critical and biographical texts, and 69 poems read by Frost himself.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Robert Frost. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003.
Burnshaw, Stanley. Robert Frost Himself. New York: George Braziller, 1986.
Faggen, Robert. Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
Galbraith, Astrid. New England as Poetic Landscape: Henry David Thoreau and Robert Frost. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.
Gerber, Philip L. Robert Frost. Rev. ed. Boston: Twayne, 1982.
Lathem, Edward Connery. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981.
Meyers, Jeffrey. Robert Frost: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Poirier, Richard. Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Potter, James L. The Robert Frost Handbook. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.
Pritchard, William H. Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Thompson, Lawrance Roger, and R. H. Winnick. Robert Frost: A Biography. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Sources
Bagby, George, Frost and the Book of Nature, Tennessee University Press,
1993, pp. 50-52.
Cox, Robert M., "Robert Frost and the End of the New England Line," in Frost: Centennial Essays, edited by Jac Tharpe, Mississippi University Press, 1974.
Ellis, James, "Robert Frost's Four Types of Belief in 'Birches,'" in the Robert Frost Review, 1993, pp. 71-73.
Frost, Robert, "The Unmade Word," in Robert Frost: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays, edited by Richard Poirier and Mark Richardson, Library of America, 1995, p. 697.
Hart, Jeffrey, "Frost and Eliot," in Sewanee Review, Vol. 84, No. 3, Summer 1976, pp. 425-447.
Ingebretsen, Ed, "Earth's the Right Place: The Sentence of Love," in Robert Frost's "Star in a Stone Boat": A Grammar of Belief, Catholic Scholars Press, 1994.
Jarrell, Randall, Poetry and the Age, Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.
Kemp, John C., Robert Frost and New England: The Poet as Regionalist, Princeton University Press, 1979.
Lowell, Amy, North of Boston, in New Republic, Vol. 2, February 20, 1915, p. 81.
Oster, Judith, Toward Robert Frost: The Reader and the Poet, Georgia University Press, 1991, pp. 59-63.
Parfitt, Matthew, "Robert Frost's 'Modern Georgics,'" in the Robert Frost Review, 1996, pp. 54-55, 67.
Perkins, David, A History of Modern Poetry: From the 1890s to the High Modernist Mode, Harvard University Press, 1976.
Pound, Ezra, Review of North of Boston, in Poetry, Vol. 5, No. 3, December 1914, pp. 127-128.
Viereck, Peter, "Parnassus Divided," in Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 184, October 1949, pp. 67-68.
Watkins, Floyd C., "Going and Coming Back: Robert Frost's Religious Poetry," in South Atlantic Quarterly, Autumn 1974, pp. 445-459.
For Further Study
Bloom, Harold, ed., Robert Frost, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea
House Publishers, 1986.
This compilation includes numerous essays by renowned critics discussing the
works of Robert Frost.
Meyers, Jeffrey, Robert Frost: A Biography, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1997.
This provocative biography delves deeply into Frost's personal life, revealing
an affair with his secretary previously undocumented.
Parini, Jay, Robert Frost: A Life, Henry Holt & Co., 1999.
Parini's biography offers a more empathetic view of Frost, acknowledging his
personal flaws without disregarding them.
Winters, Yvor, The Function of Criticism, Allan Swallow, 1957.
This work by the American poet and critic features an essay critiquing Frost's
relationship with Emerson and romanticism.
