Birches by Robert Frost is a poem on childhood and the childish desire to do things like

swing a tree. In lines 1-4 the poem starts out by introducing the reader to bent birch trees and the

imagery needed to imagine the birches; these lines suggest that something is moving the trees

and that the speaker wishes that a young boy was the swinger. The next lines 5-13 describe how

ice storms make birch trees bend, Robert Frost uses language such as “heaps of broken glass”,

and “shed crystal shells” to provide the image of being in a forest in the winter and seeing what

is happening with the birch trees. The next three lines describe how the ice storms make a

realistic permanent effect on the birch trees, Frost again uses the imagery of the tree being

dragged to the level of a withered bracken to help the reader understand how bent the birch trees

are. Lines 17-20 then provide the reader with an image of what these bent trees look like in the

summer and how their leaves are on the ground because of how the trees were bent. All of this

description on how a tree realistically is bent is acting as a push away from the message of the

poem. The next 3 lines help us understand this fact when he personifies Truth as the one to

blame for this out of place group of lines, he then goes on to talk about the young boy. Lines 24-

38 provide the story of the boy and how he played with the birch trees making them relaxed and

able to bend, the detail of the boy and great description of the timing makes this seem as though

the speaker is talking about himself, in a way, as a young boy. The next two lines give us the

imagery of the young boy swinging on the tree. This imagery puts the reader into thinking about

their childhood and the things they did like swinging on birch trees. Lines 41-42 push the reader

back into a harsher reality the speaker admits to once being a swinger of branches (confirming

our earlier thought of him being the young boy), but also for longing for this past. Lines 44-47

describe the journey of life with phrases such as “pathless wood”, “face burns and tickles with

cobwebs”, and “one eye weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open”, pathless wood
suggests that life is often a mystery and a journey through a wood without a clear path, a face

burning and tickling with cobwebs suggests going through dirty and unpleasant parts of life and

“one eye weeping from a twig’s having lashed across it open” helps the reader imagine the parts

of life that leave marks and damage and hurt us. All of this imagery of life helps the reader

understand the process of getting older and why the speaker is beginning to long for his

childhood. Lines 48-52

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love

This chunk of text suggests that the speaker would like to experience heaven, but be able to come

back to the earth, he doesn’t want to be half given the deal he wants the whole deal. The last

lines mention how the speaker would like to die climbing a tree toward heaven, but then being

set back toward the earth. It would be good going up and coming back because it would be good

going up because of the excitement of heaven and new life and coming back because he enjoys

the joys of the world and the experiences he has. He also mentions that one could do worse than

be a swinger of branches, this suggests that being a swinger of branches and imagining it is

innocent and suggests that we are also able to do this innocently. To conclude this analysis the

reader now understands the progression of the poem and some of the inner thought in the text,

these thoughts come together to suggest that Birches is a poem on childhood and the childish

desire to swing birches. This is supported because of the multiple sections on looking back at his

childhood and imagining being able to swing branches again.