Poets use imagery to convey meaning, feelings, and emotions. The contemporary poet best know for his use of imagery is Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken, opened the eyes of poetic readers and critics to Frost’s artistic creations. He uses forms of language such as diction and syntax to capture and move the reader.
When read literally Robert Frost’s Birches is the speakers observations of the birch trees in a calm New England setting. The speaker sees the permanent bend of the trees from frequent ice storms and the climbing of a playful boy. The speaker appreciates the trees, as they are a part of his comforting surroundings. He would prefer the branches to be bent by a boy for
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(Lines 1-3)
One sees a swaying tree, then more trees behind it create a dark forest, and finally a boy enters the picture as the cause of the swaying. In lines four and five he speaks directly to the reader bringing him or her further into the poem, making it so that they can claim the experience described as their own.
The use of alliteration aids Frost in his attempt to create sound through words.
They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. (Lines 7-9)
“Click,” “cracks,” and “ crazes” are all very blunt words used to describe a sound. The repetition of the “c,” in all three words draws the reader’s mind to the sounds being illustrated with the “c” in colored holding the lines together. Quickly he changes the feel of the poem:
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust –
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away (Lines 10-12)
Here he uses alliteration once again to keep the words flowing. The words soon, sun, shed, shattering, snow, such, and sweep create a new feel to the tree. It is changing; the ice is departing no longer crashing and harsh to the observer.
In lines 32-38 Frost attacks something private in the reader; he focuses on concentration. Everyone knows what it is like to concentrate really hard to
Frost?s poem delves deeper into the being and essence of life with his second set of lines. The first line states, ?Her early leaf?s a flower.? After the budding and sprouting, which is the birth of nature, is growth into a flower. This is the moment where noon turns to evening, where childhood turns into maturity, and where spring turns into summer. At this very moment is the ripe and prime age of things. The young flower stands straight up and basks in the sun, the now mature teenager runs playfully in the light, and the day and sunlight peak before descending ever so quickly into dusk. The second line of the second set states, ?But only so an hour,? which makes clear that yet again time is passing by and that a beginning will inevitably have an end.
Hirshfield writes this poem in second person to give life to the poem so that the poem speaks to the reader. The poem starts by accusing the reader of letting the redwood grow near the house. “It is foolish” (line 1) lets the reader know that nature should not be growing this close to your home. Hirshfield takes the liberty to talk straight to the reader through the speaker in telling them that it is nonsense to let nature be so close to a material object such as a house. The reader can visually see a “young redwood// grow next to a house” (line 2, 3). The tree starts to symbolize the beauty of nature growing against the materialistic world.
The only alliteration that can be found in this poem is in verse 4 when Frost writes “favor fire.” In verses 1 and 2, he writes “some say” which can also be considered an alliteration. An assonance I think I’ve found is “I hold with those who favor” because of the repeating “o” in the words.
Poetry is considered to be a representational text in which one explores ideas by using symbols. Poetry can be interpreted many different ways and is even harder to interpret when the original author has come and gone. Poetry is an incredible form of literature because the way it has the ability to use the reader as part of its own power. In other words, poetry uses the feelings and past experiences of the reader to interpret things differently from one to another, sometimes not even by choice of the author. Two famous poets come to mind to anybody who has ever been in an English class, Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings. Both of these poets have had numerous famous pieces due to the fact that they both
As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.
The Use of Literary Devices in Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost takes our imagination to a journey through wintertime with 
his two poems "Desert Places" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". These two poems reflect the beautiful scenery that is present in the snow covered woods and awakens us to new feelings. Even though these poems both have winter settings they contain very different tones. One has a feeling of depressing loneliness and the other a feeling of welcome solitude. They show how the same setting can have totally different impacts on a person depending on 
their mindset at the time. These poems are both made up of simple stanzas and diction but they are not straightforward poems.
Frost uses a lot of end-stopped lines and enjambment in the lines of his poem. Both have an effect on the way the poem is read by the readers. The lines which use end-stops can be found throughout the beginnings of the poem.
Although this poem also is connected with nature, the theme is more universal in that it could be related to Armageddon, or the end of the world. Even though this theme may seem simple, it is really complex because we do not know how Frost could possibly
The imagery shows that since the character is young and responsible, he works to support him and his family. We are first introduced to the image of the young boy working as a young adult. Then, in the first 9 lines, the author describes the setting of the poem using imagery such as, “sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it,” “Five mountain ranges one behind the other,” “under the sunset far into
Next, we look at how Frost uses the story about a young boys life as a way to escape from the pains of his own life. In lines 23 through 41, Frost goes on an elaborate rant about what Birch trees are really good for, such as “I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows”… “Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, summer or winter, and could play alone.” He even goes in to detail of how the boy would bend the trees till there was not a one left to bend, as said in lines 28 through 32 “One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer.” But frost eventually begins to simmer down, and reevaluates his “point” in the lines onward.
When the “light” is put away. As when the neighbor holds the “lamp.” They all relate to lighting and how they are afraid ofthe dark. The other structural element is rhyme. The words they used in the poem that rhymed are “tree” and “see.”
This is significant because it emphasizes the melancholy and mournfulness that he depicts with imagery in the first stanza. Later on in the second stanza, he author describes the tree the narrator would have planted as a “green sapling rising among the twisted apple boughs”. The author uses visual color imagery of the color green to describe the sapling in order to emphasize just how young the newborn was when he died. Later on in the poem, the narrator speaks of himself and his brothers kneeling in front of the newly plated tree. The fact that they are kneeling represents respect for the deceased. When the narrator mentions that the weather is cold it is a reference back to the first stanza when he says “of an old year coming to an end”. Later on in the third stanza the author writes “all that remains above earth of a first born son” which means that the deceased child has been buried. They also compare the child to the size of “a few stray atoms” to emphasize that he was an infant. All of these symbols and comparisons to are significant because they are tied to the central assertion of remembrance and honoring of the dead with the family and rebirth.
The second stanza continues the description of the setting and intensifies the extreme weather conditions. The trees are “giant,” which stresses their size but also perhaps personifies them and creates a sense of fear. Bronte uses alliteration once again in the phrase “bending / their bare boughs.” Snow is laying heavily on the boughs of the trees, so the wintery conditions are indeed severe. In line seven the speaker says that a storm is brewing, but the second stanza closes in a similar way to the first: “And yet I cannot
On the surface, the poem "Birches" by Robert Frost is simply about a man who would like to believe that birch trees are bent from young boys swinging on them, despite the evidence that it is merely a result of the ice-storms. Even with this knowledge he prefers the idea of the boys swinging from the trees because he was a birch swinger years ago and continuously dreams of returning and experiencing those pleasant memories once again. From a more explored and analytical point of view, the birch trees symbolize life and serves as the speaker 's temporary channel of escape from the world and its harsh realities. The speaker uses his imagination to return to his innocent childhood. He hopes to relieve stress and prepare to face life and