Robert Frost's Poem “Birches“

The first movement (between lines 1 and 20) is what I spoke of as “the way things can be.” Frost uses sayings such as, “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.” This quote is saying that the weather beaten or “forced” limbs find themselves weakened. They are not broken, but forever changed by the battering of a nature that seems to be so beautifully cruel to them. They seem to have been loved not by a human’s touch, but by a colder source. The imagery Frost uses to show the stress and strain put on the branches by the force of nature allows the reader to picture something being f

Understanding that you’ve reached you’re last tree is what brings me to my third and final movement (lines 41 to 55) “the way you wish things could be once more.” Frost realizes that he is no longer that farm boy. He’s climbed tree after tree. He’s learned lesson after lesson, and it has become his passion. A life of learning and growing, is a good life indeed. It comes to a point where it all seems to be “like a pathless wood.” He wishes to go back to the days where he could swing gently amongst the birch branches, learning lessons, and living life. He uses the imagery of a more empty space to show how things could seem when you’ve lost your way. In this movement his diction is of a darker choice. Words like weeping and lashed exemplify a less lighthearted notion. Yet in the last few lines, he moves back towards the diction of the second movement by speaking of the branches, almost as if they are his salvation, almost as if they’re the meaning of existence.

These birch

Some topics in this essay:
Robert Frost’s, life learning, movement lines, ice storms, birch branches, “the be”,