The sunlight refracts on the ice crystals, making a brilliant display. On a winter morning, freezing rain covers the branches with ice, which then cracks and falls to the snow-covered ground. He then realizes that it was not a boy, rather an ice storm that had bent the birches. When the speaker (the poet himself) sees a row of bent birches in contrast to straight trees, he likes to think that some boy has been swinging them. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. That would be good both going and coming back. Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,īut dipped its top and set me down again. I don't know where it's likely to go better.Īnd climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebsĪnd half grant what I wish and snatch me away So was I once myself a swinger of birches.Īnd life is too much like a pathless wood Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, With the same pains you use to fill a cup To learn about not launching out too soonĬlear to the ground. Whose only play was what he found himself,Īnd not one but hung limp, not one was leftįor him to conquer. Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, I should prefer to have some boy bend themĪs he went out and in to fetch the cows.

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hairīefore them over their heads to dry in the sun.īut I was going to say when Truth broke in Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground You may see their trunks arching in the woods So low for long, they never right themselves: They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,Īnd they seem not to break though once they are bowed You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Often you must have seen themĪs the breeze rises, and turn many-coloredĪs the stir cracks and crazes their enamel I like to think some boy's been swinging them.īut swinging doesn't bend them down to stayĪs ice-storms do. When I see birches bend to left and rightĪcross the lines of straighter darker trees,

Red frost birch