Summary of the Poem Birches:
This poem “Birches” has been composed by Robert Frost. The poet says that he looks at the darker trees on his visit to the forest. Some dark trees are growing straight upwards but the more beautiful trees of birches which are fairer in colour and growing slanting. The poet likes to imagine that the tree should be bent by a boy to fulfil his desire of swinging. He repeats that it is not so. The trees of birches are really bending with the weight of snow. Some persons are fond of looking at them in the morning time at the sun rise after a rainy night. Then the snow which has covered the branches starts cracking and the branches start moving with the breeze.
The poet further says that the snow starts melting due to the heat of the sun. The lumps of snow start falling down on the ground and they shine like crystals. The load of the snow falling on the ground has been compared by the poet with an avalanche coming down the hill. They present the colours of a prism with the bright rays of the sun. According to the poet, one may think that they are the studded stones fallen down from the top of heaven. In the same way the birches bend low to the earth in an unbreakable way. They cannot return to their straight position from their present bent position.
The poet further says that he visited the trees of birches some years after and he found them in the bending position. Other persons could also see them bowing down. They were so bent down that their leaves were touching the ground. The poet further compared those leaves with the thick hair of young girls. The girls have thrown their hair in front of their faces so that they may dry up soon in the bright sunlight.
The poet again says that he would prefer that some boy should bend the birches by their swinging. That boy is also looking after his cows when he is swinging on the branch of the birches. He wanted to convey this idea when he came to know about the reality of the ice storm. He compares that boy with the same appearance. The boy is fond of fun in the company of Nature. He has been swinging on all the trees near his father's house again and again. Its reason is that he lives very far from the town and he cannot play baseball. With this reason, all the trees look flexible and bent down. This boy knows the art of climbing each and every tree.
The poet further says that the boy knows one fact. It is that swinging should not be started very early when it may prove dangerous. The boy climbs to the top of the tree and then starts swinging. He maintains his balance in the act of climbing up and getting down. He gets down with a quick movement carefully touching the ground with his feet, not his head. He does it so carefully as a man drops some liquid in a cup. He would not fill the cup upto the brim. The poet liked swinging on the branches of the birches when he was a young boy. He has grown up, yet he desires to return to those birches for the sake of swinging again.
The poet again says that his life is like a forest where he may not find his path again after being lost there. He prays to God to return the happy days of his childhood. Then the woods seems to be endless and the faces are touched by the branches and leaves of trees. Then the face is touched by cobwebs and tears flow from one's eyes. In that condition the poet wants to go away from the earth along with its worries and problems to the imaginative world of happiness. He would like to leave the earth only for a short time . He does not want to get rid of the reality of life for ever. Its reason is that he would return to the real world once again to complete his duties.
The poet further says that Fate knows very well his desires, so his prayer should be granted in full. With this reason, Fate should not take him away from the earth forever. It is his hearty desire to return to the earth once again because here a person can get his real love. He makes it clear that even pleasures in heaven are unimportant in the face of true love on this earth. With this purpose, he may climb up a birch tree to get his escape from this world. He will go on climbing up until his weight becomes too heavy to be borne by the branch of the tree. Then that tree would be compelled to bow down to place him on the ground. He makes it clear that such balance between the earth and the heaven is very useful for all human beings. There are some other things which are worse than swinging on the birches in this world. At last the poet says that swinging on the birches gives much happiness and adequate moral teachings to all persons in this world.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
Introduction:
“Birches” published in the “Mountain Interval” in 1916, is one of the most widely quoted and anthologized of the nature lyrics of Robert Frost, John C. Kemp observes, “The philosophy articulated in “Birches”, poses no threat to popular values and beliefs and it is so appealingly affirmative that many readers have treasured the poem as a masterpiece. Among Frost's most celebrated works perhaps only. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” ranks ahead of it.”
Deep Thought:
“Birches” can be regarded as one of the most famous, admired and thoughtful of Frost's poems. From the description of a profound thought in a simple manner, it is, like most of Frost poems, simple in form and style, but complex and deep in thought. Frost has written it in blank verse which moves rhythmically, and is highly suitable for the conveyance of its deep thought. The poem also conveys a lofty and noble message in the line ‘earth is the right place for love’. According to Rueben A. Brower, “The life of the poem, ever fresh, runs through the unbroken span of the verse, which will not be stopped until the end, and which comes the voice through a series of upward and downward swing re-enacting the movement of thought.” ‘Birches’, remark Will and Throp, “turns on an episode what it means, in several modes, to be a small boy swinger of birches. But before the poem is finished it has become a meditation on the best way to leave earth for heaven”. However, leaving the earth is not the only desire of the poet. He wants to come back to it, after some time, because of his love for it. He wants to escape from the troubles of the earth, only to return to it to enjoy the beauty and pleasure it affords, like Keats. Frost seems to believe in the express the view that ' the poetry of earth is never dead. Thus, the poem contains a deep thought and a noble message in its simple form.
Contraries Brought Together:
Frost is called a poet of contraries. To him, the wonder, the virtue, the magic of poetry is its heterogeneity of elements somehow blended to single autonomous unit. In the poem ‘Birches’ also there is a combination of the light and serious tones, happiness and sadness, romance and realism, fact and fancy, reminiscences and observations. C. Day Levis recommends that one should commence one's study of Frost with this poem for it is a poem “in which observation and reminiscence, realism and fancy, the light tone and the serious are perfectly blended; it moves with beautiful assurance from mood to mood, image to image, thought to thought; its variations of speed, within the blank verse metre are masterly.”
Nature - Depiction:
Frost's keen eye for nature and obvious delight in the myriad manifestations of nature are well exhibited in the poem. This fact links him with the Romantic poets. His poetry is invariably measured by the convenient yardstick of Wordsworth's nature poetry. But Frost never saw, as Wordsworth explicitly did, any organic or significant continuity between man and nature which is nothing else but the manifestation of God. That is why in ‘Birches’ he gives vent to his apprehension that Fate may willfully misunderstand his prayer and take him away never to return to earth.
Imagery:
‘Birches’ contains several beautiful images, especially those drawn from nature. The most charming image is that in which birches are shown as girls drying their hair:
“You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that ground throw their hair.
Before than oven their heads to dry in the sun.”
Another image is found in the description of the shattering pieces of ice on the snow - covered earth as if the inner dome of heaven had fallen’. Then, there is the image of the swinger boy climbing to the top branch of the trees:
“With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Upto the brim, and eve above the brim.”
Images such as these enhance the beauty of the descriptions of Nature presented by Frost in the poem. It also reveals his skill in depicting various objects in an artistically satisfying manner through the use of simple words.
Delineation of Rustic Folk:
Both Frost and Wordsworth cared deeply for the simple country people who lived in close communion with nature away from the dust and humble of city life like Wordsworth's Michael, the Cumberland shepherd or the highland girl reaping corn, we have an array of rustic characters in Frost and the child described by him in the poem is one of them. This boy is too far from the town to learn baseball and he goes “out and into fetch the cows”. But while describing these characters Frost always emphasizes their loneliness. The boy's only play was what he found himself / summer or winter and could play alone. This stress upon loneliness and isolation of human beings makes Frost a modern poet.
Escapism:
In the poem Robert Frost expresses the need and desire to fly away from the harsh realities of the earth, like Keats to ‘Fade Far away’ into the world of nightingale so that he might have a momentary escape from the “weariness, the fever and fret” of life. But Keats wants to escape this misery of life because he cannot bear it while Frost clearly declares that his withdrawal is momentary. Keats feels sad when he has to return from the world of nightingale but Frost prefers that he wants to come back. His going away is only a period of probation to face life all the more courageously. Robert Lynd once pointed out that art is not only an escape from life but also an escape into life and the former escape is valuable only if it leads to the latter. We find this escape from life only to come back to it with a greater knowledge, with greater experience and freshened up energy like Wordsworth's Skylark Frost is “Type of wise who soar but never roam / True to the kindred point of heaven and home.”
Symbolism:
Frost frequently employs method to bring out the deeper meaning of his apparently simple poems. Thus, is the case with ‘Birches’ too. The poet uses various objects and actions as symbols to convey his world - view. The poet himself stands for the human soul. The swinging symbolises the mystic flight of the soul from the earth towards heaven to odd deeds of man, attain to divine heights. The birches are symbols of the good that launch him towards heaven. The poet's boyhood is a state of innocence of the soul; his grown up years from a state of experience or ‘considerations’ from which he seeks an escape towards his former state. The poet's desire to be a birch - swinger is the soul's desire to have a union with him. The various acts related to birch swinging, such as climbing, ascending and bending signify the impediments that come in the way of this union. Thus, the poem has a symbolic significance.
Conclusion:
‘Birches’ is a fine blank - verse poem written in a simple but artistically perfect manner. It reveals Frost's human concern and his love of the earth; it voices his preference for the world of facts or reality over that of fancy or dreams. The elements of fact and fancy, and of art and philosophy, are nicely fused in it written in an easy conversational love, the poem contains ripe wisdom and a sound world view.
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