When I was a boy growing up in West Virginia we would often spend the entire day exploring the beautiful green hills and playing tree-tag. A pack of dare-devil boys would find a grove of sapling trees and commence climbing those beleaguered trees to the top and then “ride em out," landing softly on the ground. The imagery in “Birches” is very familiar to me, as well as a pleasant remembrance. It seems to me that Frost must have recalled the gleeful experience of swinging in birch trees and initially that was the primary impetus for the poem. Thus the title of the poem is “Birches” rather than “yin and yang.” Perhaps it began that way, but rather quickly, “Truth broke in” and Frost uses birches as a vehicle to help compare and contrast gleeful spirited living to merely surviving mundanely in a painful world.
The first two lines of the poem contrast birches to the other trees: “I see birches bend to left and right across the lines of straighter darker trees” (1-2). This describes the variety in life that the birches represent contrasted with the conventionalism represented by the other trees. Then Frost briefly introduces the gleeful image of boys swinging in the birch trees (line 3). However, at this point (line 4) “Truth” breaks in and the poet begins describing an ice-storm. The ice-storm is a beautiful metaphor for life’s trials and tribulation. However, contrasted to the gleeful play of boys, it is destructive as shown in the following lines: “But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay/ As ice-storms do” (4-5). Nevertheless, in life, troubles do pass as shown in the following lines: “Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells/ Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust/ Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away/ You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen” (10-13). However, troubles can sometimes be so devastating that it does feel like heaven has fallen on one’s head. In which case, mere humans, though they be incredibly resilient, they do not completely recover: “And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed/ So low for long, they never right themselves” (15-16). At this point in the poem (line 21) there is a natural break and Frost gets back to describing the more carefree form of tree bending.
The ice-storm represents the conventional lives that most people live. It is the matter-of-fact troubles and tragedies people must endure routinely (22). However, Frost prefers the gleeful spirited living: “But I was going to say when Truth broke in/ With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,/ I should prefer to have some boy bend them” (21-23). Frost continues comparing and contrasting the conventional to the unconventional in lines 25-26: “Some boy too far from town to learn baseball (conventional)/ Whose only play was what he found himself” (unconventional). The next several lines of the poem describes the fact that even the exuberant non-conventional boy still has to live life practically and pragmatically. He “subdues” and “conquers” his father’s trees, until, “not one was left/ For him to conquer” (31-32). Certainly these lines refer to the boy learning to farm, learning to provide for his family, and learning to live in society. I think the term “father’s trees” should be considered in the broader context as referring to society and civilization, as well as the specific reference of a boy learning how to live life from his own father. For example, the boy learns to be prudent and not to be rash: “He learned all there was / To learn about not launching out too soon/ And so not carry the tree away/ Clear to the ground” (33-35). He matures and exercises self-control: “He always kept his poise/ To the top branches, climbing carefully” (36-37). However, and quite happily, Frost returns to gleeful, youthful exuberance and re-establishes the yin/yang theme of the poem: “Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, / Kicking his way down through the air to the ground” (39-40). Line 41 is another natural break in the poem and it is where Frost inserts himself into the poem and begins to nostalgically reminisce.
When Robert Frost wrote the poem “Birches” he was forty-two years old. Undoubtedly, by that time he had suffered many of the hardships life has to offer. Beginning in line 41 of the poem Frost recalls his boyhood exuberance and he longs to go back: “So was I once myself a swinger of birches./ And so I dream of going back to be” (41-42). Like so many adults in mid-life, he has become “weary of considerations” (43). In line 44 he says that, “life is too much like a pathless wood.” He compares life to being down on the forest floor struggling along through a wood thicket: “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” (45-47). He longs to be high in the tree tops where perhaps he can survey the forest floor and discern the right path and maybe get back on track: “I’d like to get away from earth awhile/ And then come back to it and begin over” (48-49). Nevertheless, because “Earth’s the right place for love” (52) he does not want to die. It is clear that he loves life. The earth is a sensuous place. He does not know if heaven will hold these pleasures: “I don’t know where it’s likely to go better” (53). Perhaps Frost was familiar with the following biblical passage which seems to imply that heaven is not primarily a sensuous place:
Jesus answered and said unto them,
ye do err, not knowing the scriptures,
nor the power of God.
For in the resurrection they
neither marry, nor are given in
marriage, but are like the angels
of God in heaven.
But as touching the resurrection
of the dead, have ye not read
that which was spoken unto you
by God, say,
I am the God of Abraham, and
the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob? God is not the God
of the dead, but of the living.
(Matthew 22:29-32)
Coming to the conclusion of the poem Frost continues his allusion to death in the following lines:
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk,
Toward(sic) heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again. (54-57)
The “black branches” represent the doctrine of universal sin, and the fact that one’s actions may not always be pure. We all sin. However, the “snow-white trunk” represents the concept that motives can be pure. Nevertheless, though one strives “toward” heaven, no one is good enough to climb to heaven on the black branches of impurity, which is shown in lines 56 and 57. Frost may have had a passage from the Book of Job when he wrote lines 55-57:
If I wash myself with snow,
and make my hands never so clean;
Yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch,
and mine own clothes shall abhor me.
For he is not a man, as I am,
that I should answer him, and we
should come together in judgment
Neither is there any daysman
between us, that might lay his hand
upon us both. (Job 9:30-34)
Even though Frost seems to imply that attempting to reach heaven through one’s own efforts is doomed to failure, i.e. “set me down again,” the attempt still has merit because it helps define and sustain civilization. Furthermore, though an imperfect path, it is superior to thrashing around in a “pathless wood.”
