<P> Frost's writing of this poem was inspired by another similar poem "Swinging on a Birch - tree" by American poet Lucy Larcom and his own experience of swinging birch trees at his childhood . Frost once said "it was almost sacrilegious climbing a birch tree till it bent, till it gave and swooped to the ground, but that's what boys did in those days". Written in 1913 - 1914, "Birches" first appeared in Atlantic Monthly in the August issue of 1915 and was later collected in Frost's third book Mountain Interval (1916). </P> <P> When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them . But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice - storms do . Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain . They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many - colored 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 You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen . They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see 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 . But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter - of - fact about the ice - storm I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows--Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone . One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer . He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground . He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim . Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground . So was I once myself a swinger of birches . And so I dream of going back to be . It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open . I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over . May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return . Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better . I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow - white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again . That would be good both going and coming back . One could do worse than be a swinger of birches . </P> <P> When the speaker (the poet himself) sees a row of bent birches in contrast to straight trees, he likes to think that some boy has been swinging them . He then realizes that it was not a boy, rather the ice storms that had bent the birches . On a winter morning, freezing rain covers the branches with ice, which then cracks and falls to the snow - covered ground . The sunlight refracts on the ice crystals, making a brilliant display . </P> <P> When the truth strikes the speaker, he still prefers his imagination of a boy swinging and bending the birches . The speaker says he also was a swinger of birches when he was a boy and wishes to be so now . When he becomes weary of this world, and life becomes confused, he would like to go toward heaven by climbing a birch tree and then coming back again, because earth is the right place for love . </P>

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