Birches Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 42 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Birches.

Birches Summary & Study Guide

This Study Guide consists of approximately 42 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Birches.
This section contains 1,213 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Birches Study Guide

Lines 1-4

Frost opens the poem with an image of the birches bent "left and right / across the lines of straighter darker trees" (lines 1-2) and quickly puts forth one explanation for how they got that way: a boy had been swinging on them. Right away, however, he admits this is false, saying in line 4, "But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay." However, the image of the playful boy is a powerful one for Frost, and he will soon return to it.

Lines 5-11

The first break in the poem occurs in line 5 when Frost admits that it is ice storms, not boys, who bend down the birch trees. The next few lines are a beautiful description of birch trees, their branches frozen and encrusted with ice in the morning after an ice storm. However, their beauty is only short-lived; soon, in line 9, the sun "cracks and...

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This section contains 1,213 words
(approx. 4 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Birches Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Birches from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.