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WHEN
I see birches bend to left and right
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Across the lines of
straighter darker trees,
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I like to think some boy’s
been swinging them.
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But swinging doesn’t bend
them down to stay.
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Ice-storms do that. Often
you must have seen them
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5
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Loaded with ice a sunny
winter morning
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After a rain. They click
upon themselves
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As the breeze rises, and
turn many-colored
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As the stir cracks and
crazes their enamel.
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Soon the sun’s warmth makes
them shed crystal shells
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10
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Shattering and avalanching
on the snow-crust—
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Such heaps of broken glass
to sweep away
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You’d think the inner dome
of heaven had fallen.
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They are dragged to the
withered bracken by the load,
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And they seem not to break;
though once they are bowed
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15
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So low for long, they never
right themselves:
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You may see their trunks
arching in the woods
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Years afterwards, trailing
their leaves on the ground
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Like girls on hands and
knees that throw their hair
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Before them over their heads
to dry in the sun.
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20
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But I was going to say when
Truth broke in
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With all her matter-of-fact
about the ice-storm
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(Now am I free to be
poetical?)
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I should prefer to have some
boy bend them
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As he went out and in to
fetch the cows—
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25
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Some boy too far from town
to learn baseball,
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Whose only play was what he
found himself,
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Summer or winter, and could
play alone.
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One by one he subdued his
father’s trees
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By riding them down over and
over again
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30
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Until he took the stiffness
out of them,
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And not one but hung limp,
not one was left
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For him to conquer. He
learned all there was
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To learn about not launching
out too soon
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And so not carrying the tree
away
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35
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Clear to the ground. He
always kept his poise
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To the top branches,
climbing carefully
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With the same pains you use
to fill a cup
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Up to the brim, and even
above the brim.
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Then he flung outward, feet
first, with a swish,
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40
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Kicking his way down through
the air to the ground.
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So was I once myself a
swinger of birches.
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And so I dream of going back
to be.
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It’s when I’m weary of
considerations,
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And life is too much like a
pathless wood
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45
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Where your face burns and
tickles with the cobwebs
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Broken across it, and one
eye is weeping
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From a twig’s having lashed
across it open.
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I’d like to get away from
earth awhile
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And then come back to it and
begin over.
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50
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May no fate willfully
misunderstand me
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And half grant what I wish
and snatch me away
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Not to return. Earth’s the
right place for love:
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I don’t know where it’s
likely to go better.
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I’d like to go by climbing a
birch tree,
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55
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And climb black branches up
a snow-white trunk
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Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
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But dipped its top and set
me down again.
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That would be good both
going and coming back.
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One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
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60
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