Birches Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCEFGHIJDKLMFNOPK QRCSTUVBWCXYZDA2B2C2 D2E2OA2B2A2F2A2EKG2H 2B2DI2H2B2J2K2WL2A2When I see birches bend to left and right | A |
Across the lines of straighter darker trees | B |
I like to think some boy's been swinging them | C |
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay | D |
Ice storms do that Often you must have seen them | C |
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning | E |
After a rain They click upon themselves | F |
As the breeze rises and turn many coloured | G |
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel | H |
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells | I |
Shattering and avalanching on the snow crust | J |
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away | D |
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen | K |
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load | L |
And they seem not to break though once they are bowed | M |
So low for long they never right themselves | F |
You may see their trunks arching in the woods | N |
Years afterwards trailing their leaves on the ground | O |
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair | P |
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun | K |
But I was going to say when Truth broke in | Q |
With all her matter of fact about the ice storm | R |
I should prefer to have some boy bend them | C |
As he went out and in to fetch the cows | S |
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball | T |
Whose only play was what he found himself | U |
Summer or winter and could play alone | V |
One by one he subdued his father's trees | B |
By riding them down over and over again | W |
Until he took the stiffness out of them | C |
And not one but hung limp not one was left | X |
For him to conquer He learned all there was | Y |
To learn about not launching out too soon | Z |
And so not carrying the tree away | D |
Clear to the ground He always kept his poise | A2 |
To the top branches climbing carefully | B2 |
With the same pains you use to fill a cup | C2 |
Up to the brim and even above the brim | D2 |
Then he flung outward feet first with a swish | E2 |
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground | O |
So was I once myself a swinger of birches | A2 |
And so I dream of going back to be | B2 |
It's when I'm weary of considerations | A2 |
And life is too much like a pathless wood | F2 |
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs | A2 |
Broken across it and one eye is weeping | E |
From a twig's having lashed across it open | K |
I'd like to get away from earth awhile | G2 |
And then come back to it and begin over | H2 |
May no fate willfully misunderstand me | B2 |
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away | D |
Not to return Earth's the right place for love | I2 |
I don't know where it's likely to go better | H2 |
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree | B2 |
And climb black branches up a snow white trunk | J2 |
Toward heaven till the tree could bear no more | K2 |
But dipped its top and set me down again | W |
That would be good both going and coming back | L2 |
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches | A2 |
Robert Frost
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