What Is The Tone Of The Poem Birches

The poem Birches by Robert Frost portrays the images of a child growing to adulthood, and it is symbolized by birch trees as they age. The language of the poem is arranged in a systematic way through images, similes, metaphors, and musical devices. The images given in the poem make the readers visualize the real world compared to childhood life.

The tone of the poem is skeptical due to its spiritual concerns, such as the persona’s longing for youth and his introspection with the word “Truth” in line 21 makes the poem’s tone more melancholy. His memory gives him flashbacks of the innocence of his youth so he says “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

Firstly, Frost used metaphor in the very first fifteen lines of a boy swinging the birch of tree limbs to show what nature does. He also describes the tree limbs in the winter as he says “Loaded with ice” that cracks and “crazes their enamel” with imagery and the usage of the enamel is metaphoric. The snow metaphorically is compared to “broken glass” which swept away. Frost returns his metaphor in the lines 41 and 59 of a person who’s being a "swinger of birches" as someone who uses creative imagination. Secondly, he uses personification which is also given to birches which “never right themselves” and “trailing their leaves on the ground.” Furthermore, he also used personification in line 21: “Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm.” Thirdly, Frost also used simile in line 18, 19, 20: “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.” In addition to the previous simile there was another simile spotted in line 44: “And life is too much like a pathless wood/Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs”. And at the very end, the poet uses more imagery in the 55th: “And climb black branches up a snow-white