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66. Birches

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right     
Across the line of straighter darker trees,     
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.     
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.     
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them             5
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      10
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      15
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.      20
But I was going to say when Truth broke in     
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm     
(Now am I free to be poetical?)     
I should prefer to have some boy bend them     
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—      25
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      30
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      35
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,      40
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      45
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.      50
May no fate wilfully 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,      55
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.      60

Robert Frost