Birches by Robert Frost-a poetic analaysis

In the poem "Birches" by Robert Frost, Frost attempts to illustrate a cycle of growing up from childhood to adulthood. According to Frost, through the use of childhood imagination one can easily endure the struggle we call life. "Birches" is separated into different sections, beginning with a description of a birch tree being bent under various conditions. The poem than continues to a farm boy's childhood, where he is 'seen' swinging on the birches, and lastly Frost describes his desires to return to his childhood, wanting to start over. This poem contains no rhyme scheme and is not divided into stanzas. Frost utilizes the use of various literary devices, such as personification, symbolism, alliteration, and metaphors to describe to the audience the difficulties life throws at us, and how one can persevere with the aid of innocent images found in many of our childhood memories within our souls.

The first attempt to evoke our sense of sight by Frost came in the first part of the poem. Frost describes to the audience birches which are bend to left and right. He wants to believe that the bends were cause by a boy swinging on them, yet he realizes that "swinging doesn't bend them down to stay/As ice-storms do (Line 4-5)." This can be symbolic of how life tends to weight us down with stress and responsibilities, causing us to change completely as the birches do. Frost than describes how the sun's warmth shatters and breaks the ice like the "inner dome of heaven had fallen (line 13)." More symbolism can be found within the sun and the ice. The sun helps us to "shed crystal shells/Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust" (line 10-11) through its warmth providing relief from the ice, just as our love ones around us help with their love to relief us of our stressful lives. While, the sun provides relief the ice symbolizes the hardships and obstacles we each have to face in life. In order to advance into the future, we must break away from the ice with the support of