A boy swinging on the birches is the speaker's way of escaping life and to "get away from earth awhile." The speaker dreams of returning to the times when he had once been a swinger of birch trees when he's "weary of considerations and life is too much like a pathless wood." When one is stuck in a pathless wood, one way to navigate is to climb trees. The speaker uses the examples of ice storms to symbolize aspects of real-life situations that humans undergo. The ice storms represent the truth and reality that the speaker tries to escape from. The speaker of the poem expresses his thoughts of how he likes to think that birches are bent because "some boy's been swinging them." In the first stanza, the speaker is interrupted in his thoughts to explain how the ice storms turn the trees. The speaker likens birch swinging to "getting away from the earth awhile." Even though he knows that birches are bent by ice storms, he prefers his nostalgic vision of a boy climbing a tree and riding to the ground. At the sight of bent birch trees, he likes to think that it is because boys have been swinging on them. At least for me, this is what I will always do.In Robert Frost's poem "Birches," the narrator reminisces about the times he had swung on trees and dreams of going back to those days. Even if we encounter the temptation of escapism, or perhaps a death wish, we have to carry on with our journey. Undoubtedly, life is tiring, for we have to bear our responsibilities and duties on our shoulders at any time, but still, the million years of time (including BC) where human-beings have existed through, most have lived by bearing heavy loads of obligations until the end of their lives.Įxtracting another poem by Robert Frost, Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening - we live, because we have obligations and responsibilities that we are under. I would like to be a swinger of birches, too for I don't have the courage to leave this place for ever, and because even though a specific element in life has hurt and crushed me, it somehow has been what keeps me motivated at certain times. He parallels this motion with his wish of temporary escape, illustrating the escapism is as though swinging up toward heaven and then down, returning to the ground. There is no other place that he'd rather be than on earth, where love exists.įrost writes about his childhood of swinging on the birches, of being flung up and down from the ground to the air, then from the air back to the ground. I don't know where it's likely to go better. The experience of love torments him as much as it strengthens him. In his poem, it strongly suggests that Love is one of the reasons that gives him the urge to run away, but it is also the reason why he chooses to return to earth instead of escaping to other places. It is marked that his will of returning is based on the appreciation he shows towards life - and that is what he finds on earth: Love. Because of his weariness of considerations, and that he feels lost in life - And life is too much like a pathless wood, he wants to leave this place for a little while - not permanently, though - so that he can leave all his obligations and responsibilities behind, and before long, he would like to come back and face them.
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