Robert Frost "Birches"

“Birches,” by Robert Frost is a single-stanza poem of 59 lines. Unlike many of his other poems, “Birches” has no discernable rhyme scheme. Instead, it takes on the rhythm of New England-style speech. “Birches” looks more like prose than many of Frost’s other poems, but its compactness and its blurring of chronology keep it bound in the genre of poetry.
The speaker of “Birches” seems to be an aging man looking out on the wooded area that has been an extension of his home for all his life. He reminisces about his childhood, which was filled with the adventures he made for himself in the solitude of the woods. He would climb birch trees until they got weak at the top and dipped him back down to the ground. “So was I once myself a swinger of birches” (41). The catalyst that reminds the speaker of his childhood is the image of the birch trees bent down with heavy ice after a winter storm. “I like to think some boy’s been swinging them. / But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay / As ice-storms do…” (3-5).
In the description of arched birch trees, the speaker loses himself momentarily at line 19. The arched trees conjure an unusual association in his mind to “…girls on hands and knees that throw their hair / Before them over their heads to dry in the sun” (19-20). Then he abruptly snaps himself out from the spell of that mental picture: “But I was going to say when Truth broke in” (21). What happens here? Perhaps “Truth” is a peaceful memory specific to his childhood that brings him pain in his old age. Perhaps his heart aches for the memory of his childhood friend. The image of her drying her hair in the sun could be a vivid flash of clear memory among the murkiness of memories gone dark with time. Maybe, knowing a bit about Frost’s history of tragic losses in the family, the girl is his own daughter. The memory, then, is a happy recollection of childhood innocence that quickly turns sour when “Truth” reminds him that she has since perished.
The tension of “Birches” is created by the warmth of memory conflicting with the reality of old age and winter. “So was I once myself a swinger of birches. / And so I dream of going back to be.” says the speaker in lines 41 and 42. The periods in these lines are significant. They signal the finality of experience. The speaker once swung on birches--period. He will not swing on them anymore. He dreams of swinging them again--period. All he can do is dream. The reality is that he is “weary of considerations / And life is too much like a pathless wood” (43-44). He escapes the pressure of an uncertain future by dreaming about happier times. His face “burns and tickles with cobwebs / Broken across it,” (45-46). This image evokes both the struggle of a boy tearing through physical obstacles, and a figurative portrayal of an old man with wrinkles on his face.
What puzzles me the most in “Birches” begins on line 52: “Earth’s the right place for love: / I don’t know where it is likely to go better” (52-53). Love is not mentioned until this point, which is so close to the end of the poem. Perhaps this gives the context for which the speaker has included all the information up to this point. Is the reader now supposed to say, “Oh! He is saying all this with love in his heart!?” Maybe the speaker wants to briefly get away from the environment where love exists, so dreams of climbing “’till the tree could bear no more, / But dipped its top and set me down again. / That would be good both going and coming back” (56-58). Perhaps he needs to get a higher perspective on love, then come back down to Earth and proceed with what he has learned. He needs to take a break from considerations that make him weary, rethink what love is, then return to continue refreshed on his journey in the pathless wood.
In “Birches,” the landscape is as psychological as it is natural. The body, the mind, and the soul should work together as the parts of a single compass to guide a person through life’s journey. It is possible that the cycle of climbing a birch tree and being set back down on earth represents the wish to reunify the mind, body, and soul.