Analysis of Birches The discursive blank verse meditation "Birches" is not centered on a revelatory and continually encountered natural scene; rather, he builds a mosaic of thoughts starting from fragments of memory and imagination. Its liveliness and genial, bittersweet speculation help make it one of Frost's most popular poems, and because its shifts in metaphor and tone invite different interpretations, it has also received much critical discussion, not always admiring. The poem moves back and forth between two visual perspectives: birches bent by the boys' playful swings and ice storms, the thematic entanglement is quite disconcerting. The birch trees bent "along the lines of straighter, darker trees" subtly introduce the theme of imagination and contrast with darker realities. Then, nearly a third of the poem describes how ice storms bend these trees permanently, unlike the boys' action; this scene combines images of beauty and distortion. Ice shells suggest radiating light and color, and trees bent at the level of ferns suggest suffering, which is immediately light....