Childhood in Robert Frost's Birchess and William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper

Authors write poetry for many reasons including to prove a point, share life stories or to just make the reader think. Robert Frost is a great example of a poet influenced by his experiences. These influences show up in most of his poetry, but especially in “The Road Not Taken”, “Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening”, and “Birches”. Moving to the New England region the nature and people helped him become a poet of worldly fame.

Aside from the connections and similarities both of these poems are actually quite different. In Cummings’ poem the time cycle such as, “spring summer autumn winter” (3). Has the effect that time goes by quickly and the little things almost are insignificant. Also in Cummings’ poem he had mentioned how children grew to forget, allowing for such interpretations like, once one grows up they loose who they once were. Where in Frost’s poem time slows down to make a choice that will alter one’s life. When he is deciding between the roads he has time to ponder and question his move having each movement being significant rather than insignificant. Also in Frost’s poem it is safe to assume that when making a choice one will use the knowledge and experiences they had as a child to make choices in the future allowing the reader to understand that one doesn’t simply loose who they once were, but one changes who they become through the choices they make.

The voice in this poem is one of pure happiness and innocence. In this state of joy, the infant is unaware of the world in which he lives and that awaits him. In these opening lines, we see Blake revealing the everyday modeling and structure that categorizes the world, but is absent in the simplicity and purity of childhood. The child has no name because joy needs no other name. Labeling and classification are products of organization and arrangement that the world uses to assimilate innocence into experience. Blake demonstrates that it is through this transition, that the virtue of child’s play is destroyed. Blake utilizes specific emotions such as “happy,” “joy,” “sweet,” “pretty,” “sing,” and “smile” to describe this uncorrupted state of being. There is no danger, darkness, or struggle for the infant. Instead, he exists in a care free state, free of guilt, temptation, and darkness. The birth of a child is celebrated by Blake and it stirs in us powerful emotions of peace, love, and hope.

William Blake's The Chimney Sweeper, written in 1789, tells the story of what happened to many young boys during this time period. Often, boys as young as four and five were sold for the soul purpose of cleaning chimneys because of their small size. These children were exploited and lived a meager existence that was socially acceptable at the time. Blake voices the evils of this acceptance through point of view, symbolism, and his startling irony.

For some people, their childhood may have been the best time of their lives, but for others, it could just be many years of memories they dread remembering. Regardless of how someone feels about it, childhood is a critical part of life. In the poems “Birches” by Robert Frost and “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde, the authors explore what it is like to be a child and the major transition from childhood to adulthood. While Frost does so through the voice of an adult, Lorde chose to accomplish this from a child’s perspective. Although, the speakers are not the only aspects of the poem that sets them apart. In “Birches”, Frost describes childhood as a simplistic, carefree and innocent time, while in “Hanging Fire”, Lorde emphasizes the never ending struggles children face when growing up. However, the speakers of the poems do share a common challenge in maintaining personal relationships throughout childhood and beyond.

There are several likenesses and differences in these poems. They each have their own meaning; each represent a separate thing and each tell a different story. However, they are all indicative of Frost’s love of the outdoors, his true enjoyment of nature and his wistfulness at growing old. He seems to look back at youth with a sad longing.

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past” (Oscar Wilde). Youthfulness is a quality every person wants to retain. People develop Peter Pan syndrome and want to go to Neverland to stay a child forever. This however, is not possible. Not only because Neverland does not exist, but also because people cannot stay in their youth. They realize their youth is vanishing and people try to hold on to their adolescence. Although on the surface “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, “In just” by E. E. Cummings, and “anyone lived in a pretty how town” also by E. E. Cummings do not seem to have a common theme, youthfulness and progression of life is an underlying theme in each poem.

Comparing Frost’s "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", "Birches", and "The Road Not taken" Robert Frost was an American poet that first became known after publishing a book in England. He soon came to be one of the best-known and loved American poets ever. He often wrote of the outdoors and the three poems that I will compare are of that "outdoorsy" type. There are several likenesses and differences in these poems. They each have their own meaning, each represent a separate thing and each tell a different story. However, they are all indicative of Frost’s love of the outdoors, his true enjoyment of nature and his wistfulness at growing old. He seems to look back

Comparison of Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill and Robert Frost's Birches Poets often use nature imagery to comment on the relationship between humans and the natural environment surrounding them. Traditionally, this relationship is portrayed in a positive manner as it places emphasis on the concept that nature is representative of beauty; consequently, embracing this representation will enlighten the human experience. The facets of that relationship are represented within Dylan Thomas' "Fern Hill" and Robert Frost's "Birches". Both poets invoke an image of nature that is picturesque, serene and innocent in order to convey a

     William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper” was mainly about the possibilities of both hope and faith. Although the poem’s connotation is that of a very dark and depressed nature, the religious imagery Blake uses indicates that the sweeps will have a brighter future in eternity.

Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost influenced my thorough love of different styles of literature, particularly poetry. To the masses, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Frost only share job titles, but the two poets share many similarities within their writing. Personally, I read pieces from both authors over the course of my schooling experience. I admired Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” from a young age, and that particular stole my heart since the first read. “The Raven,” became one of my favorite poems further down my schooling career, with its clear ominous tone that symbolizes much of Poe’s writing. Frost’s and Poe’s works may not seem similar, aside from the section in which their books reside within a library, but their work resembles each other’s quite well. Frost’s writing serves as a better introduction to poetry due to his easily relatable themes, his background connects to everyday audiences, and his use of modern language.

In a conversation poem titled “Frost at Midnight,” romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge creates a persona of himself who spends the duration of the poem having a one-sided conversation with his newly born baby. The narrator laments his own childhood, but finds solace in knowing that his baby has potential for a better life than he, since the baby will have a nature-centered upbringing. The narrator contrasts constricted and expansive imagery, enumerated and enjambed sentences, and alienated and familiar diction to underline the differences between his own childhood education, which was spent studying books, and the childhood education he hopes his baby will have. The narrator suggests that nature will offer his baby a childhood education superior to his own because nature will teach the baby to be one with the world, allowing him to feel peace and serenity no matter the circumstances.

Ground-breaking, momentous, and a time of great struggle, the Industrial Revolution was famous for its innovations and infamous for the sobering reality it inflicted upon the standard family. Mid-18th century Britain brought poverty to everyday urban workers. With it, came an increase in child labor like never seen before. In order for a normal family to survive in the urban lifestyle, all members of a family had to work. This included children as young as four years to work as chimney sweepers, miners, and most popularized in 18th century Britain, factory workers. By the year 1800, children under the age of 14 in Britain’s factories accounted for 50% of the labor force (“Industrial Revolution, Child Labor”). Though the number continued to grow, all did not go unaccounted for. Romanticism, an effort opposite the movement, gave recognition to the emotional conflicts overlooked. Romanticism shed light on the daily struggles of the everyday man, woman, and the most neglected up until that period of time, the child. Throughout history, others have written about childhood, but Romantic poets began to question what it meant to be a child. The question, though not answered directly, later became revealed in their works where it exposed their belief systems. The role of the child in British Romantic Poetry represents the early life of Romantic poets, and the qualities they possessed in childhood.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words,” Robert Frost once said. As is made fairly obvious by this quote, Frost was an adroit thinker. It seems like he spent much of his life thinking about the little things. He often pondered the meaning and symbolism of things he found in nature. Many readers find Robert Frost’s poems to be straightforward, yet his work contains deeper layers of complexity beneath the surface. These deeper layers of complexity can be clearly seen in his poems “ The Road Not Taken”, “Fire and Ice”, and “Birches”.

The speaker in Innocence is a chimney sweeper, but the poem doe snot focus on him–it focuses on “little Tom Dacre” and his dream (Innocence, 5). Before it was shaved off, Tom had white hair “that curled like a lamb’s back” (Innocence, 6). The color white and lambs are symbolic of innocence and purity; even though his hair is shaved away, the goodness is still right below the surface. The subject of Experience is in stark contrast to Tom Dacre. The speaker of the poem is someone who is talking to the child, and they do not describe the chimney sweeper like a person. Instead, he is called “a little black thing” sitting in the snow (Experience, 1). Snow may be white like Tom Dacre’s hair, but it is also stark and inhospitable: it serves to make the soot-covered child stand out. Like Tom, this child was prepared to become a chimney sweeper; his parents dressed him in “the clothes of death” and taught him “to sing the notes of woe” (Experience, 7-8).