This famous
poem “Birches” was published in Frost’s third collection “Mountain interval” in
1916. Frost wrote this poem in 1913-1914 which appeared first in “Atlantic
monthly” in the August issue of 1915. Frost was inspired by Lucy Larcom’s poem
“Swinging on a birch tree” and also by his childhood experience of swinging on
birches, a simple game played by many boys of new England region. Originally
Frost named his poem “Swinging Birches” and published it in 1916. Lucy Larcom
(1824-1893) in her poem described the thrill of swinging on birches (a popular game for children in countryside)
using many apt comparisons and metaphors. This poem was published in 1867 in
“Childhood Songs”. The opening lines are “Swinging on a birch tree/To a sleepy
tune/Hummed by all the breezes/In the month of June.” The moving leaves make a
sound like the “dancing drops of a brook on pebbles”. The boys swinging on
birches will feel happy like sailors rocking on a mast flying towards the sky
which looks “like a wild blue eye.” The oriole (a song bird) too making a jolly
whistling sound looks like a sailor in its hanging nest (hammock) on the top of
the elm tree. “Up and down, we see-saw/Down into the grass,” which with scented
fern and rose buds seems like a soft velvety carpet below their feet. “Swinging
on a birch tree/ This is summer joy? / Fun for all vacation/ Don’t you think so
Boy? / Up and down, we see-saw/ Merry and at ease/Careless as a brook is/ idle
as the breeze.” Though this poem describes the pleasures of swinging, we do not
find any deeper levels of meaning as the poem is meant only for children. But Frost gives a sensuous description of birches in winter in the first part of the poem. The second part is reflective in content with symbolic interpretation.
On seeing the bent branches of birches, Frost thinks that some boy might have been swinging them but later he realizes that the ice storms had bent the branches “loaded with ice” on a sunny winter morning after a rain. The boy remembers his boyhood experience and wishes that the birches might have been bent down by some boy instead of the ice-storm.
The snow-covered branches make a cracking sound as the
ice crystals break and are scattered all over the ice-covered floor like heaps
of broken glass. Under the sunlight they shine with many colours as if a dome of
heaven had fallen. The bent tree branches with trailing leaves spread all over
the ground appear "like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair/Before them over their heads to dry in the sun." The poet uses this
beautiful image to express his love of Nature in a very sensuous manner. A
highly sensory description of freezing and thawing of ice and the reality of
winter is seen. The stanza abounds in many figures of speech like alliteration
(“cracks and crazed”) , onomatopoeia (click, shattering, cracks) and use of
sibilance (“soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells”). The use of
present participle forms and enjambment (verse flowing from one line another
line) captures the unstoppable momentum of the melting ice. (“shattering and
avalanching on the snow-crust”). A poetic language is used to describe a
scientific phenomenon. The first twenty lines are largely devoted to description
of the effect of ice-storms on the birches.
Though the poet knows the truth, still he prefers the imagination of a boy swinging and bending the branches. He felt a sense of triumph in subduing those branches. As a boy, he used to climb carefully up to the top branch and suddenly press the branch down with force to bend it to the ground with a swishing sound in the air. As a boy he was a swinger of branches and now in a nostalgic mood wishes to be so whenever he becomes weary of the world and when life becomes confused “like a pathless wood” covered with cobwebs and when he feels the blows as if unseen branches strike against his face with a lashing movement causing his eye to weep with burning. The images “cobwebs” and “twigs” show the complex, discomforting and painful nature of worldly life. The poet used a very simple but appropriate image to bring out the sorrows and uncertainty of worldly life.
The poet remembers the skill required to climb
the branches to the top and swish “kicking his way down through air to the
ground.” It requires much caution and care to do so just like one has to fill
the cup up to the brim or above the brim. There is a limit to which the boy can
climb the tree and he has come down after some time. Maintaining balance is of
great importance in life. There is a limit to what a cup can hold and there is
a limit to which the boy can climb a tree.
In this poem the act of swinging on birches is symbolically represented as a way to escape from the harsh realities or truth of the adult world. The boy climbs the tree as if he is climbing toward heaven to a place where he can be free. But he has to come back again because the earth is the right place for love. So man is like a swinger of branches leaving this world for a while, and coming back again. Thus the poet reveals his love for humanity and the and the world in spite of uncertainty and unexpected troubles.
This sense of
Romantic escape from earthly burdens is seen in the poems of many poets of the
Romantic age. John Keats in his famous poem “Ode to a nightingale” wishes to
escape from “the weariness, the fever and the fret” of realistic world “where
but to think is full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs” into the joyful world
of nightingale on wings of imagination. But his flight is not sustained for
long. He is dragged back to his real world as he says that fancy is “a
deceiving elf.” In his famous ode “On a Grecian Urn” the poet tries to enter
the immortal world of beauty and art which later turns out to be a “cold
pastoral” lacking in life and dynamic change. On the other hand, William
Wordsworth in his poem “To a sky lark” shows the bird as a wise minstrel which
flies but never roams away from home. It is “true to the kindred points of
heaven and home.” Frost, too like Wordsworth, finds intimate connection to
earth in spite of worldly troubles and tribulations.
Frost highlights the narrator’s regret that he can no longer become a swinger of branches because he is an adult and he cannot leave his responsibilities behind. In fact, the narrator is not able to enjoy the imagined view of a boy swinging on the birches. He is forced to accept the truth that the bends are caused by winter storms and not by a boy swinging on them. The poet’s wish to re-enact his childhood experience of swinging on the branches and climbing towards heaven to escape from the rational world remains inconclusive. The freedom of imagination is appealing and wondrous but the narrator still cannot avoid returning to the earth and bearing his responsibilities in life. The imaginative escape is only a temporary phase.
This poem
was written in blank verse with a particular emphasis on “the sound of the
sense.” Frost describes the cracking of ice crystals on the moving branches,
selecting similar sounding syllables to match with the meaning: “soon the sun’s
warmth makes them shed crystal shells/Shattering and avalanching on the
snow-crust.” To produce the sounds of swinging birches the poet uses repetition
of sibilant “s” sound: “I should prefer to have some boy bend them.”
Written in a conversational language the poem
moves between the imagination and reality. The earth, though not perfect, is a
better place for going on. The poet shows an agnostic approach when he views
heaven as a fragile concept when he says “the inner dome of heaven had fallen.”
This poem is a nostalgic celebration of youthful joy juxtaposing boyhood
pleasures and carefree life with worldly troubles and worries of adult life.
The use of contrast is seen throughout the poem as seen in use of words like:
black/white, ideal/real, heat/cold, old age/adolescence, fact/fiction etc. He
draws a comparison between the straighter and darker trees with the arched
trunks of birches with trailing leaves on the ground. The truth of the boy
swinging the birches serves as an antidote to the matter-of -fact truth of the
ice-storms.
The poet seems to suggest that limits of the
real world must exist as a basis in order to enjoy the imaginative world. The
poet thinks that life is beautiful and more tangible than momentary pleasures
of heaven. The poet makes it clear that neither is he an escapist nor is he
espousing escapism to get away from the rigors of life which demand duty and
entrusts responsibilities. Rather what he desires is a brief respite from the
harsh realities of existence. The poet wishes to climb the birch tree and
momentarily transcend the monotony of life. Once he swings on the birches, the
cobwebs of existence quit like ice crystals on the tree when the sun is up. The
moment of ecstasy going beyond oneself is an imaginative act. The leap of
imagination must yield finally to the conditions of reality. Viewed from this
angle the poem becomes a commentary on the relationship between life, truth and
art. Imagination cannot live outside the world.
The poet desires to go beyond fact and reality but does not wish to raze
the truth of birches like an ice-storm. Structurally “Birches” is a poem with
no stanza breaks. This gives the poem a free, flowing tone enhanced with the
use of enjambment.
Some critics
like Alvarez deny Frost as a nature poet and confirm his role as a rural or
country poet who describes nature with objective reality. “He is a country poet
whose business is to live with Nature rather than through Nature. --- he is
essentially a poet of pastures and plains, mountains and rivers, woods and gardens,
groves and bowers, fruits and flowers, seeds and birds.” Frost himself denied
being a nature poet. In his words, “I am not a Nature poet… there is always a
person in my poems.” Yet we can fully feel the poet’s affection to nature’s
beauty and grace.
According to
some critics “Birches” is one of the poems that begins with insight and
finishes with joy. The poetry of Frost does not raise and resolve questions. He
explores problems and examines alternatives rather than taking sides between
conflicts. Robert Frost uses Nature as a background to illustrate people’s
psychological struggles with everyday life. His poems are usually observations
on Nature and proceed to the human situations such as loneliness, helplessness,
confusion, isolation and indifferent conditions.
Frost
has a tendency to philosophize but is free from didacticism. It has been
explained by Lewis in these words, “He is a serious moralist as well as a
serious artist; but his peculiar intimacy with nature prevents him from being
openly didactic: He teaches, like nature, in parables: sometimes merely
presenting a picture, a mood, a narrative, and leaving you to draw your own
conclusions, never permitting himself more than the tender, humorous sort of
comment we find at the end of ‘Birches’.
C.D.
Lewis makes the following comment on its rhythm - the upward and downward
movement of the rhythm fully reflects the going up to and coming down of the
swinger of birches. But when the poet moralizes the rhythm becomes slow.” In
the words of Untermeyer, “Birches”, one of Robert Frost’s most widely quoted
poems, beautifully illustrates the poet’s power, the power to blend observation
and imagination.
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12th July,2021 Somaseshu Gutala
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