Contrasting imagery and themes in Robert Frost's Birches

Frost Birches

So was I once myself a swinger of birches. / And so I dream of going back to be," (lines 42-43). Robert Frost's poem "Birches" contrasts the playful fantasy of childhood with the mundane realities of science, the cold heaviness of winter with the light-filled warmth of summer. "Birches" is therefore filled with contrasting imagery and themes. The central motif of the poem, swinging, itself conveys the concept of traversing between opposites, swaying to extremes. For example, the narrator dwells on the iciness of winter and later, evokes summer by mentioning baseball (line 26). The arch of the birch tree contrasts sharply with the sturdiness of its trunk, which enables it to withstand the trials of winter. Comparing a young boy bending the boughs of a birch tree through vivid imagery, metaphor and a lyrical and relaxed tone, the narrator of Robert Frost's poem "Birches" creates a meandering journey between life's contrasts.

The birch itself is a tree of contrasts: the narrator describes its "black branches up a snow-white trunk," (line 56). Bending toward the ground, the birch unnaturally deviates from its task of growing upwards, toward the sky. The contrast between Earth and Heaven is central to Frost's poem. Bowed birch boughs convey sharp distinctions between symbolic realms of Earth and Heaven. "Earth's the right place for love," the narrator states; but the human being will always climb back "toward heaven," (lines 53; 57). Thus, the poet addresses directly the dualistic forces of Earth and Heaven in "Birches."