The first twenty lines of the verse are set in late winter, just before the herald of Spring, a season that most suggests imaginative stirrings, when the natural world begins to rouse itself from winter’s lethargy. Frost creates wonderland images of woodland in winter as the birches are: ‘Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning/After a rain’. When Frost observes that ‘As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel’, he seems to suggest that even nature in all her crystal white purity, cannot maintain perfection. The alliteration and onomatopoeia in ‘cracks and crazes’, emphasizes the impact of nature, as she takes her inevitable course. Nothing stays the same, and here nature emulates life. The sibilance employed in the lines: ‘Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells’ creates a fairytale vision of sparkling droplets of melting ice as winter gives way to springtime promise and renewal. The onomatopoeic use in the following line of: ‘Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust’, coupled with shivering sibilance, emphasizes the coming demise of winter.
Frost then introduces the concept of the ice being as: ‘…such heaps of glass to sweep away/You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.’ This metaphorical catastrophe again seems to reiterate the shattering of Frost’s imagined, idealized existence with the harsh reality of life. In the following lines of ‘Birches’, Frost seems to allude to the heavy responsibilities of life. The following lines: ‘They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load/And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed/So low for so long, they never right themselves…’ seem to be a distressing allusion to old age and infirmity. Perhaps Frost is warning us here that youth, like nature, is ephemeral, and life should be lived fully before Time scythes us away, like the unwanted and spent bracken. The double alliteration and heavy vowel sounds in the phrase: ‘So low for so long’, creates a further depressing outlook.
However, with the introduction of a surprising simile, Frost has the ability to awaken our senses once again with a fresh, vibrant vision. He compares the birches to alluring maidens:
‘…trailing their leaves on the ground/Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair/Before them over their heads to dry in the sun’.
The introduction of sexual connotation is again repeated in Frost’s confessional: ‘Summer or winter, he could play alone. /One by one he subdues his father’s trees/By riding them down over and over again/Until he took the stiffness out of them, /And not one but hung limp, not one was left/For him to conquer’. This young man’s fantasies are strengthened by the repetitions of ‘One by one’ and ‘over and over’, adding excitement and expression to Frost’s idealized images, and the successive enjambements in the narrative serve to emphasize his youthful zeal. In the alliterative ‘l’ sound of: ‘He learned all there was/To learn about not launching out too soon’, coupled with the lengthening double vowel sound of ‘ too soon’, further stresses Frost’s urgent need for accurate timing in his quest.
The many enjambements in this first section of ‘Birches’ add to the fast pace and excitement in the retelling of the scene. When Frost employs the pseudonym of ‘Truth’ for his reality, his dreams are again denied. The phrase ‘matter-of-fact’ with its integral hyphens add a staccato effect, emphasizing Frost’s disappointment with the actuality of the ice storm weighing down the branches, not boyhood adventures. Frost confirms: ‘I should prefer to have some boy bend them/As he went out to fetch the cows’. Once again, Frost’s imagination is at variance with reality.
Frost then tells us of his need for taking his adventures in life to the very brink. At first, he is cautious, telling us:’ He always kept his poise/To the top branches, climbing carefully/With the same pains you use to fill a cup, up to the brim, and even above the brim’. The alliterative use of ‘c’ in ‘climbing carefully’ creates the initial sense of intensity. The long vowel sounds of assonance employed in ‘same pains’ emphasize the careful planning and execution of these daring acts. The repetition of ‘brim’ indicates how far Frost is prepared to venture. When Frost says ‘Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, his excitement is palpable. The alliterative us of ‘f’ in ‘he flung outward, feet first’ coupled with the onomatopoeic use of ‘swish’ echoes the sense of thrusting forward movement and heady freedom. In the following line: ‘Kicking his way down through the air to the ground’, Frost further captures the excitement and sensation of downward movement with use of the internal rhyme of ‘down’ and ‘ground’. The different ‘o’ vowel sounds employed in ‘down’, ‘through’ and ‘ground’ accentuates the feeling of breathlessness and the swinging movement through the air.
In a reflective mood, Frost recalls his boyhood days: ‘So was I once a swinger of birches./And so I dream of going back to be./It’s when I’m weary of considerations/and life is too much like a pathless wood………I’d like to get away from earth awhile/And then come back to it and begin over.’ The tone and language Frost uses here is one of resigned weariness with the familiarity and responsibilities of adulthood, and longs for the carefree days of childhood. The simile of life becoming like a pathless wood indicates the confusion and loss of identity that Frost now feels. With the sentiment: ‘I’d like to get away from earth awhile/And then come back to it and begin over’. Frost is half wishing that he can escape life so that he can be reborn again and experience life anew. Fearing that he might not be able to return, Frost quickly realizes his folly and capitulates with the words: ‘Earth’s the right place for love; I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.’ Frost realizes that everything has a season and, like the melting ice on his beloved birch trees, there is an order of things in nature, which is retold through the cycle of life.
The final analogy is of Frost wistfully musing that life should be lived to its utmost, experiencing all that it has to offer. When the time was right, he wanted his death to be a similar adventure:
“I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,/And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk/Toward heaven, 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”
In conclusion, Frost’s journey through life, although at variance with reality, is personified by his climbing the snow-laden branches of his beloved birch trees. From the standpoint of maturity, he wishes he could return to his younger days, where life could be all that he wanted, if only in his imagination. Ultimately, Frost prays that life will be filled with adventures until his dying day, when his final epitaph would be: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches’.
Word Count 1397
