Birches Robert Frost question?

Birches

by Robert Frost



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.



Can someone help me?



In the first two sentences of the poem, the speaker gives two observations about birches. How do they differ?

The first is negative and the second is positive.

The first is a fantasy but the second is reality (could really happen).

The first deals with all the elements in the environment but the second deals only with trees.

They don't differ really. They both deal with things that destroy trees.



';Birches'; can be divided into three sections. Section two begins with:

';So low for long, they never right themselves:';

';You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.';

';I should prefer to have some boy bend them . . . '

';But I was going to say when Truth broke in . . .';



Section three of ';Birches'; begins with:

';It's when I'm weary of considerations,';

';Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.';

';Broken across it, and one eye is weeping . . .';

';So was I once myself a swinger of birches.';



The simile that begins ';You may see their trunks arching in the woods . . .'; compares:

Boys who swing on birches and the branches they swing on

The bent trunks of the birches and girls kneeling drying their hair

broken glass and girls kneeling drying their hair

an ice storm and the trunks of the bent birches



What is this simile referring to in the context of the poem?

The bent trunks of the trees are frozen to the ground

The bent trunks of the trees straighten up as soon as the ice storms are over

The bent trunks of the trees display their leaves on the ground

Broken glass has destroyed the trunks of the trees.



It becomes apparent in the lines that begin, ';One by one he subdued his father's trees . . .'; that the boy swinging on birches is a symbol for something bigger and more meaningful. Read the lines that are in bold print after the above line and determine that the boy and his swinging are symbols for:

The destruction of the environment and careless use of its resources

Childhood innocence and the accomplishing of tasks that help one mature

The evil in children and dislike they sometimes have for their parents

Lack of determination and lazineBirches Robert Frost question?
Are these multiple-choice questions? I would say that the first observation is imaginative, but not fantasy. When Frost goes on to recount how he imagines the trees got permanently bent by a boy's swinging on them repeatedly, he ends that passage by saying that he once did that very thing.



Then, ';But I was going to say . . . '; is a pretty clear transition into another part of the poem. So is ';So was I once myself . . . .';



For the first simile, just look at the second part of the sixth sentence (after the colon). So the answer to the next question should also be apparent.



Finally, so is the boy destroying the trees? They're still alive, with leaves, well after the swinging or the ice-storm. And in what way could his swinging on the trees on his way to get the cows (i. e. to do a chore) show either evil or laziness? So what's left?Birches Robert Frost question?
I think that this is a poem about the child actor Thora Birch. Robert Frost really had vision.