Frost’s poem Birches seems to be a reflection of his life. While looking at Birch trees he begins to have flashbacks of his boyhood. The speaker envisions young boys swinging from the trees.
Line 3 states:
“I like to think some boy’s been swinging them”
Throughout the poem the speaker speaks on the birch trees resilience, perseverance, and triumph through season changes such as ice storms during the Winter, Autumn when the leaves begin to fall off leaving the trees bare and vulnerable. Seasons also indicates the speaker growing older.
Lines 14-15
“They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break”
Line 8
“As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored” Perhaps a reference to Fall.
Line 10
“Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust” A spring/winter reference.
Line 16
though once they are bowed
“So low for long, they never right themselves:
Through these lines the speaker is trying to communicate feelings of remorse and regret. The birch trees, now boys have grown older. The speaker has aged and is unable to gain his youth back.
This theme continues in the next lines 17-18
“You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground”
Line 21:
“But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice storm”
The speaker like many youths was eager to grown into adulthood. However, once reality hit of the hardships faced as an adult he began to reflect on the lectures given by his elders. Truth was given a gender and took on a person. Truth and matter of fact are terms indicating the accuracy of whoever gave him the advice as a child. He is now facing the things forewarned by the adults in his life who at the time had faced the same struggles he is now facing.
Line 23
“I should prefer to have some boy bend them”
When the speaker was a child he thought the advice from adults were due to mistrust and them being intrusive. This was his only struggle. Since then as an adult he’s faced way more. The speaker is saying that he’d rather go through what he thought was difficult and unfair back then than what he is facing now. The two can’t compare as children have less responsibilities.
Lines 24 and 25:
“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.”
This boy is unlike Frost as a child. While the speaker was preoccupied with keeping up with adults. This boy depicted in the poem is enjoying his childhood, just being a kid. He’s enjoying the small things available to him in life unlike the “privileged” boy playing baseball. Perhaps this boy is from a rural area hence the cow reference. He’s not a city boy. This fact enables him to be more humble and appreciative of his surroundings. Through the climbing of birch trees, he’s able to be imaginative as a child should be. He made due with what he found in his environment as he didn’t have the luxury of playing sports like the boy from town.
Lines 28-30
“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”
The boy through experiencing his childhood has
This “stiffness” the speaker refers to can be the serious old person or adult whose ability to laugh and feel happiness has been almost stolen due to the demands of adulthood. After working undesirable jobs just to make ends meet and receiving eviction notices and overdue payment warnings one finds it hard to smile. It becomes very hard to see the positive side of things.
But while the adult sees the child playing he too can experience vicariously through the innocent child the same joy again. The happiness and hope is restored in the adult through this child. In this stanza, the trees are a symbol of his father’s stern demeanor, his extra baggage.
The speaker lost sight of what was really important and when he realized it was too late. As youth coming of age we are often preoccupied by fads. We go through “growing pains” as we hit puberty and maturation. This is a very confusing and challenging time for them as they search for a sense of belonging. They don’t really have an identity yet. They may idolize celebrities or even older adults. What’s interpreted as defiance from youth by adults may actually be a lack of communication and a misunderstanding.
Youth are reluctant to confide in adults about what they’re feeling because they don’t know exactly what’s occurring. That’s when the distance is created. During this time youth may feel more of a connection with their peers. Hormonal changes can contribute to mood swings. As youth distance, themselves their parents perceive this as isolation. Things that were formerly interesting may be replaced with new interests and habits.
This is all normal however, time is limited. In the speaker’s case while he was busy being a teenager his family was neglected. Before he knew it, he was an old man and those in his life had passed on. For this he harbors internal guilt.
“He learned all there was about not launching out too soon.”
Again, the speaker is expressing regret, the boy in the poem is a glance into the past. He’s writing a poem to his former self giving him insight into adult life. He’s gone back in time to warn his former self to appreciate life while you can.
In lines 41-42 the speaker blatantly expresses his regret with rushing to grow into adulthood.
“So, I once was a swinger of birches
And so I dream of going back to be”
Lines 43-54
“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”
Life for Frost has become so stressful as an adult that when he faces obstacles he envisions himself as a carefree, fun loving, innocent little boy again. He thinks of all the times he took for granted and that now he can never get that back. This puts him in a depression. Life has assaulted him, the cobwebs symbolizing time passing. The pain inflicted by the twig is the hardships of life.
As children, little girls are given dolls that mimic actual infants. Were taught that this is the norm. They even excrete waste in diapers and were made to change them, burp them and feed them. Perhaps it is preparation for motherhood but I believe that children should be children and not so quick to want to do the things adults do. Motherhood is not a game, babies are not toys or accessories.
As a child I was obsessed with growing older. It began innocently with putting on my mother’s high heels and makeup then progressed. I would douse my face with my grandmother’s Mary Kay toner and although it burned I would persist. It hurts to be beautiful is a phrase I’d heard before. I wanted to be a woman.
Later on, “I can’t wait to be 16 I would say” But, this was simply because I was tired of being dictated to and I felt beyond my years compared to others my age. I felt that my parents didn’t trust that I was capable of making decisions. This was an insult to my intelligence. I felt sheltered and restricted. I later realized once I ventured out onto my own how naïve I had been.
I found out how much I didn’t know. It took me time to learn skills to survive on the outside. My struggles left me in constant stress and agony reminiscing about the times I took for granted. The times where I’d blow miniscule things out of proportion and thought I needed to escape from my parent’s care. But by then it was too late and I was already an adult in my twenties and couldn’t dare stomach the courage to ask my parents to move back in.
I put myself into the world prematurely, without any education on how things went and had to learn along the way. Therefore, my childhood ended abruptly. I can empathize with the speaker because I’ve endured that same feeling of having your life slip away from you. It is a very painful feeling.
I’m riddled with guilt for how I’ve treated my family. My younger siblings, my now aging parents and grandparents. I quickly realized that everything they warned me against was in fact very true. But, I had to learn the hard way through experiencing those things for myself. Sometimes, you must see it to believe it which is what I did. My baby siblings are now teenagers and going through the exact phase I was when I left home.
My little brother was so lively before always interested in me, and all I did was push him away. I was too busy chasing puppy love and my friends. Now he’s distant and I try to reach out but end up hurt in the process. I wish I would’ve cherished him as a child. I was a misguided, confused, selfish teenager worried about the wrong things. The same crowds I was following I am no longer in contact with now.
I’m trying desperately to form a relationship again with those I pushed away and it’s hard. I like the speaker of this poem, advise youth against disrespecting their parents and leaving home early without proper preparation. I do work now mentoring at-risk youth. I want to serve as a resource and support system for them because they need positive role models.
The last line states:
“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”
In conclusion, although as children we think we have it bad and we can’t wait to grow older. This is just because of the restrictions we have as children. We are desperate for independence at times which is why we fantasize about “I can’t wait to get older”. As he got older though he began to appreciate being a boy. Although birch trees may injure you with scuffed knees, broken bones from falling off etc. These things are hardly things to worry about compared to the difficulties faced in adulthood. Through this poem the speaker is trying to communicate to the reader to be appreciative of things in life because you never know when they may end. Through Frost were reminded to cherish our childhoods and not take things for granted.
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