19 pages • 38 minutes read
Robert FrostBirches
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Blank Verse
Frost uses blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, throughout “Birches.” One of the most common metrical forms in English Language poetry, blank verse provides a natural rhythm that resembles conversation. For Frost, utilizing this structure allows him to adopt a colloquial tone within the context of a traditional poetic form, creating intimacy with his reader and underscoring the universality of his philosophical message. Frost suggests that the nostalgia his speaker feels for childhood joy, and his attempt to locate it again in the context of his adult life, is a universal desire, one that appeals to himself and to his reader. Periodically throughout the poem, he directly addresses the reader in the second person, further deepening this connection and intimating that the reader should likewise value and respect the natural world. Frost’s lines, following the five-beat constraint of pentameter, often result in enjambment; this contributes to the pacing and tension of the poem and supports the meditative nature of the poem’s content, as the speaker meanders and muses upon the birches.
Assonance and Consonance
“Birches” is famous for Frost’s rich sound texture, which makes heavy use of assonance (repeated vowel sounds) and consonance (repeated consonant sounds). Early in the poem, Frost crafts lines like, “As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. / Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells / Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— / Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away” (Lines 9-12). The density of the “s” sounds allows the reader to access a multisensory image, both seeing and hearing the effect of the ice on the birches. The repetition of the sound also underscores the weight and density of the ice itself and the enormity of its impact upon the trees. The repeated “a” sounds in Line 9, “As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel,” create continuity across the line and pull the reader into the rhythm of the poem.
Simile
Frost uses several key similes in “Birches” to add richness to his imagery and emphasize the philosophical underpinnings of the poem. In the first half, he describes how, after surviving the ice-storm, the reader might later encounter the birch trees still bent over: “their trunks arching in the woods / Years afterwards, 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” (Lines 17-20). Frost establishes the relationship between that natural world and the human world, alluding to his later claim of careful relationship between the boy and the birch trees. He also notes the possibility of beauty even after something difficult; the trees, despite being fundamentally altered by the ice storm, still have some of the natural beauty and innocence associated with youth. The simile will resonate more in hindsight, after the reader understands the speaker’s feelings about Earth as “the right place for love” (Line 52) and his desire to always return to the earth.
Near the end of the poem, Frost employs another simile to describe the speaker’s current state of mind, stating that he dreams of returning to his days of birch-swinging when he’s “weary of considerations, / And life is too much like a pathless wood / Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs / Broken across it” (Lines 43-46). Drawing on the established natural imagery of the poem, Frost recasts the wood as a more complicated place. Not just the bringing of joy for the boy birch-swinger, the wood can also be pathless, confusing, and violent. Despite this, the speaker still has great love for the earth and is adamant in his desire to remain a part of it.
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By Robert Frost
