Compare And Contrast Birches And Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

During his life, Robert Frost, the icon of American literature, wrote many poems that limned the picturesque American Landscape. His mostly explicated poems “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” reflect his young manhood in the rural New England. Both of these poems are seemingly straightforward but in reality, they deal with a higher level of complexity and philosophy. Despite the difference in style and message, “Birches” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are loaded with vivid imagery and symbolism that metaphorically depict the return to the nature and childhood, the struggle between reality and imagination, and also freedom and captivation.
Frost wrote “Birches” in a blank verse structure, but “Stopping by the
The playful boy in Birches is imaginary, he represents a younger version of Frost himself. The boy enjoyed swinging on the trees by “riding them over and over again / until he took the stiffness out of them”(30-31). This visual image illustrates the victory of the poet in moving to his own imaginary world where “you’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen”(13). In a study guide on Birches, it is claimed that “this line (13) signals the beginning of a retreat from reality” (Poetry for Students, Vol. 13). In addition, comparing the birches in the ice storm to “girls on hands and knees that throw their hair” (19) symbolizes the captive position of the speaker who is getting older as the Birches, year after year. Even though the poet feels free when he is a swinger of birches, he reached a statement that “Earth is the right place for love” (53); climbing the trees and knowing about coming back again is an example of escape and transcendence towards heaven. Identically, the speaker in “Stopping by Woods”, is watching “the woods fill up with snow” (4), the “frozen lake” (7) in an unfamiliar location. With a feeling of sadness, he wants to keep on contemplating the nature but many objects prevents him to do so; the farmhouse in the village where he belongs and the confused little horse. In fact, the speaker concluded in that wintery location that his horse must thought it was strange to stop there, so the animal shake his harness bells. Frost, in this image creates an auditory imagery to explain the soothing silence that made the speaker fleetingly forget about his