FREE ESSAY ON ROBERT FROST - NATURAL SYMBOLISM

ROBERT FROST - NATURAL SYMBOLISM

Birches
Robert Frost is a modern poet whose poetry is written to be easily understood and read as
though it were everyday speech. He uses free verse to tell of his love and respect for
nature. He also utilizes natural symbolism in a lot of his writings. He has written about
rural landscape and wildlife so much that people often refer to his as a nature poet. In
the poem Birches, Frost utilizes natural symbolism to explain how heaven is the ideal
realm of purity and light, a place in which we can aspire to. He also explains how the
tension between earthly satisfactions and higher aspirations emerges from the
recollection of a childhood game. The use of unrhymed iambic pentameter helps Frost
illustrate his personal experiences of loneliness, love, and desire. 
Frost's description of loneliness is provided immediately after he first refers to
himself with his specific description in Line 20. There he states, I should prefer to
have some boy bend (the birches). He describes the loneliness of his youth, writing that
he was a boy on a farm too far from town to learn baseball whose only play was found in
him. As a young boy, Frost's only amusement was to swing from the birches. His attempts
to conquer loneliness were demonstrated through the vehicle of the birches. Frost goes on
to describe perhaps the most valuable lesson he learned as a child trying to overcome
loneliness, the lesson of practice makes perfect. Frost states He always kept his poise
to the top of the branches climbing carefully with...pains...Then he flung outward, feet
first, with a swish kicking his way down through the air to the ground. He learned here
that there are times in life when one will conquer a situation be done with it, and fly
joyfully away knowing that one has conquered it. 
Frost also uses Birches to illustrate his experiences with love. He has apparently been
hurt by love before, stating, I'd like to get away from earth and then come back to it
and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and
snatch me away not to return. Apparently his heart has been broken by a lost love. He may
think this is because he submitted vulnerably to her, but if he had a chance to do it
again, he might not submit himself so much to the next thief. However, he definitely has
the desire to achieve love. 
His desire to achieve is described when he states how he would like to achieve love.
Frost states, I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, and climb...toward heaven (the top
or ultimate of his desire, be it love or something else) till the tree (or the world)
could bear not more, but dipped its tip and set me down again. He is possibly stating
that no matter what life one pursues, one can use the world as a tree that one can climb
to the top, but realize that at a certain point, the world will no longer be able to
support one. 
Frost ends his poem stating his satisfaction with overcoming loneliness and love and
benefiting from the desire to achieve by writing, One could do worse than be a swinger of
birches.
Birches is written beautifully in blank verse, even though each line is in iambic
pentameter. The absence of rhyme scheme implies that a poet must compensate for this in
other ways. Frost's does this wonderfully with the use of enjambment and imagery in his
poem. This can be seen in his explanation of the appearance of the birches. Frost
explains the appearance of the birches scientifically implying that natural phenomenon
makes the branches bend and sway. Frost also lends sound to his description of the
branches as "they click upon themselves as the breeze rises." Frost explains the branches
are bent by the ice, but do not break. Frost again adds beautiful imagery comparing the
bent branches "trailing their leaves on the ground" to "girls on hands and knees throwing
their hair before them to dry in the sun."