Palm Sunday Readings, Poems & Observances

Palm Sunday

http://www.seedbed.com/scripture-quotes-poems-palm-sunday/

The Gospel of John notes that Jerusalem welcomed him with palm branches (John 12:13). Palm trees were in abundance in the Mediterranean and were even found on ancient coins. After the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 AD), the Jews rededicated the temple carrying palm branches (1 Macc. 13:51). In Revelation 7:9, people from all nations use palm branches in their worship of Jesus. All four Gospels provide an account of Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem:

Matt. 21:1–11

Mark 11:1–10

Luke 19:28–38

John 12:12–18

Many churches initiate the Palm Sunday service with a procession that represents Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem. This practice is attested to as early as in the 4th century in the Pilgrimage of Egeria.

"Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in." - Psalm 24:7

"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us." - Psalm 118:26-27a

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you; righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." - Zechariah 9:9

Palm Sunday Observances & Poems

Within the very liturgy of Palm Sunday, the tension is evident; traditionally, it is the only day with two Gospel readings—the enervating triumphal entry, and the tragic narrative of crucifixion. Palms turn to passion. It is the way God has designed it, for he did not count equality with God something to be grasped. - Brian Rhea

O Christ our God

When Thou didst raise Lazarus from the dead before Thy Passion,

Thou didst confirm the resurrection of the universe

Wherefore, we like children,

carry the banner of triumph and victory,

and we cry to Thee, O Conqueror of love,

Hosanna in the highest

Blessed is He that cometh

in the Name of the Lord.

- Toparion of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday

When Christ entered into Jerusalem the people spread garments in the way: when He enters into our hearts, we pull off our own righteousness, and not only lay it under Christ’s feet but even trample upon it ourselves. - Augustus Toplady

No pain, no palm;

no thorns, no throne;

no gall, no glory;

no cross, no crown.

- William Penn

Rest for my soul -- REST! Admidst fears,

Doubts, insecurities -- REST! For my anxious

Heart REST! You made the flower of the field and clothed it --

REST! FOR MY WORK-A-HOLIC

BUSY WAY OF AVOIDING YOU -- rest! FOR TIRED

FEET AND TIRED HANDS.

YOU ARE THE ONE UNRAVELING ME --SLOWING ME

DOWN SO I CAN FEEL AGAIN -- SO I CAN FIND Hope

IN SOMETHING MORE reliable than my own success -- 

YOU ARE SETTING ME free

Healing my wounds

Purifying my desires

Pushing back the effects of the fall

And you are coming soon

I can feel it every time I see the flowers.

- Samantha Wedelich

The smell of church reminds me of my childhood

but over the years, the priest becomes a foolish man.

I've pondered over my faith for so long -

sometimes I reach into my conscious and

pull out steaming fistfuls of pop culture like,

watching Rosemary's Baby on Saturday.

Was God dead in the 50s?

Not nearly as much as he is now.

Today was Palm Sunday, and I felt like a baby,

so naked in the desert sand.

Delicate church, how do you reel me in?

- Kyra Rae

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus come

Break my resistance and make me your home.

- from a Christian Lectionary

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A Collection of Palm Sunday Observances

http://happyvalentineimages.com/palm-sunday-quotes-poem-for-god-from-bible/

Palm Sunday is also known as a "Movable Feast" as the church celebrates on the Sunday before Easter. It celebrates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

1. "Palm Sunday is like a glimpse of Easter. It’s a little bit joyful after being somber during Lent." - Laura Gale

2. "What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured." - Kurt Vonnegut

3. "Palm Sunday tells us that it is the cross [where] is the truer tree of life." - Pope Benedict XVI

4. "Palm Sunday is like a glimpse of Easter. It’s a little bit joyful after being somber during Lent." - Laura Gale

5. "Then I saw heaven opened and a white horse appeared. Its rider is the Faithful and True; he judges and wages just wars." - Revelation 19:11

6. "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you; righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." - Zechariah 9:9

7. "It is wiser to build our dependence on God than building it on people because people can choose to leave us at any moment. But only we can choose to leave God because He is ever present and there for those who need and seek Him with a sincere Heart. Happy Palm Sunday!" - Anon

8. "The great gift of Easter is hope – Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake." - Basil Hume

9. A Palm Sunday’s thought: "Life is full of ups and downs. Glorify God during the ups and fully trust in Him during the downs." - Anon

10. "Anyway - because we are readers, we don’t have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next - and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis - at any time of night or day." - Kurt Vonnegut

11. "What’s with this final curtain? When God-disturbed churches are packed Palm Sunday, Easter, and Christmas, but not in-between? Will we feel the fateful lightening of his terrible swift sword? Is this Armageddon?" - Buck Malachi

12. "Jesus found a donkey and sat upon it, as Scripture says: Do not fear, city of Zion! See, your king is coming, sitting on the colt of a donkey!" - John 12:14

13. "There would be no Christmas if there was no Easter." - Gordon B. Hinckley

14. "Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, ‘Christ has risen,’ but ‘I shall rise.’" - Phillips Brooks

William Sharp - A Crystal Forest & Other Poems (Poetry from 2017 "Beauty & the Beast")

A CRYSTAL FOREST

by William Sharp

The air is blue and keen and cold,
With snow the roads and fields are white
But here the forest's clothed with light
And in a shining sheath enrolled.
Each branch, each twig, each blade of grass,
Seems clad miraculously with glass:

Above the ice-bound streamlet bends
Each frozen fern with crystal ends.
.
.
.
Belle reads William Sharp's poem "A Crystal Forest"
in Beauty & the Beast and then adds the following
lines from the Disney script:

"For in that solemn silence is heard
in the whisper of every sleeping thing:

Look, look at me,
Come wake me up
for still here I'll be."

Transcripts from Nature

from "The Human Inheritance" and "Earth's Voices"

1882-1886

WILD ROSES

Against the dim hot summer blue
Yon wave of white wild-roses lies,
Watching with listless golden eyes
The green leaves shutting out their view,
The tiny leaves whose motions bright
Are like small wings of emerald light:

White butterflies like snow-flakes fall
And brown bees drone their honey-call.

THE EBBING TIDE

A long low gurgle down the strand,
The sputtering of the drying wrack
The tide is slowly ebbing back
With listless murmuring from the land,
And the small waves reluctant flow
Where the broad-bosomed currents go.

The sea has fall'n asleep, and lies
Dense blue beneath the dense blue skies.

DAWN AMID SCOTCH FIRS

The furtive lights that herald dawn
Are shimmering 'mid the steel-blue firs;
A slow awakening wind half stirs
And the long branches breathe upon;
The east grows clearer---clearer---lo,
The day is born! A refluent flow:

Of silver waves along each tree
For one brief moment darlingly.

A DEAD CALM AND MIST
(Towards evening)

The slow heave of the sleeping sea
With pulse-like motion swells and falls,
And drowsily a stray gull calls
The very wail of melancholy;
All day the moveless mist has slept
On the same bosom east winds swept:

No breath of change in the grey mist,
Save just a dream of amethyst.

TANGLED SUNRAYS

Aslant from yonder sunlit hill

The lance-like sunrays stream across
The meadows where the king-cups toss
I' the wind, and where the beech-leaves thrill
With flooding light they twist and turn
And seem to interlace and burn:

Until at last in tangle spun
'Mid the damp grass their race is run.

LOCH CORUISK (SKYE)

The bleak and barren mountains keep
A never-ending gloom around
The lonely loch; the winds resound,
The rains beat down, the tempests sweep,
The days are calm and dark and still,---
No other changes Coruisk fill:

Scarce living sound is heard, save high
The eagle's scream or wild swan's cry.

SUNRISE ABOVE BROAD WHEAT- FIELDS

The pale tints of the twilight fields

Have turnéd into burnished gold,
For waves of yellow light have rolled
From the open'd east across the wealds
While 'mid the wheat spires far behind
Stirs lazily the awaken'd wind:

A skylark high (a song-made bird)

Sings as though God his singing heard.

PHOSPHORESCENT SEA

The sea scarce heaves in its calm sleep,
The wind has not awakened yet
Tho' in its dreams it seems to fret
For, ever and again, the deep
Hearkens a sigh that steals along
As might some echo of sad song:

Ah, there the wind stirs! Lo, the dark
Dim sea's on fire around our barque.

A GREEN WAVE

Between the salt sea-send before
And all the flowing gulfs behind,
Half lifted by the rising wind,
Half eager for the ungain'd shore,
A great green wave of shining light
Sweeps onward crowned with dazzling white:

Above, the east wind shreds the sky
With plumes from the grey clouds that fly.

A CRYSTAL FOREST

The air is blue and keen and cold,
With snow the roads and fields are white
But here the forest's clothed with light
And in a shining sheath enrolled.
Each branch, each twig, each blade of grass,
Seems clad miraculously with glass:

Above the ice-bound streamlet bends
Each frozen fern with crystal ends.

THE WASP

Where the ripe pears droop heavily
The yellow wasp hums loud and long
His hot and drowsy autumn song:
A yellow flame he seems to be,
When darting suddenly from high
He lights where fallen peaches lie:

Yellow and black, this tiny thing's
A tiger-soul on elfin wings.

AN AUTUMNAL EVENING

Deep black against the dying glow
The tall elms stand; the rooks are still;
No windbreath makes the faintest thrill
Amongst the leaves; the fields below
Are vague and dim in twilight shades---
Only the bats wheel in their raids:

On the grey flies, and silently
Great dusky moths go flitting by.

A WINTER HEDGEROW

The wintry wolds are white; the wind
Seems frozen; in the shelter'd nooks
The sparrows shiver; the black rooks
Wheel homeward where the elms behind
The manor stand; at the field's edge
The redbreasts in the blackthorn hedge:

Sit close and under snowy eaves
The shrewmice sleep 'mid nested leaves.

THE ROOKERY AT SUNRISE

The lofty ehn-trees darkly dream
Against the steel-blue sky; till far
I' the twilit east a golden star
O'erbrims the dusk in one vast stream
Of yellow light, and lo! a cry
Breaks from the windy nest---the sky:

Is filled with wheeling rooks---they sway
In one black phalanx towards the day.

MOONRISE

The first snows of the year lie white

Upon the branches bending low;
A surging wind the flakes doth blow
Before the coming feet of Night--
Half dusk, half day, betwixt the pines
Green-yellow the full moon reclines:

Green-yellow, and now wholly green,
While faint the windy stars are seen.

FIREFLIES

Softly sailing emerald lights

Above the cornfields come and go,
Listlessly wandering to and fro
The magic of these July nights
Has surely even pierced down deep
Where the earth's jewels unharmed sleep:

And filled with fire the emeralds there
And raised them thus to the outer air.

THE CRESCENT MOON

As though the Power that made the Nautilus
A living glory o'er seas perilous
Scathless to roam, had from the utmost deep
Called a vast flawless pearl from out its sleep
And carv'd it crescent-wise, exceeding fair,---
So seems the crescent moon that thro' the air:

With motionless motion glides from out the West,
And sailing onward ever seems at rest.

THE EAGLE

Between two mighty hills a sheer
Abyss---far down in the ravine
A thread-like torrent and a screen
Of oaks like shrubs-and one doth rear
A dry scarp'd peak above all sound
Save windy voices wailing round:

At sunrise here, in proud disdain
The eagle scans his vast domain.

A VENETIAN SUNSET: BEFORE A CHANGE

(Returning from Torcello)

In violet hues each dome and spire
Stands outlined against flawless rose;
O'er this a carmine ocean flows
Streak'd with pure gold and amber fire,
And through the sea of sundown mist
Float isles of melted amethyst:

Storm-portents, saffron streamers rise,
Fan-like, from Venice to the skies.

EMPIRE (PERSEPOLIS)

The yellow waste of yellow sands,
The bronze haze of a scorching sky!
Lo, what are these that broken lie;
Were these once temples made with hands
Once towers and palaces that knew
No hint of that which one day threw:

Their greatness to the winds---made this
The memory of Persepolis?

* * * * * * * *

William Sharp photographed in 1894

by Frederick Hollyer.

Poems by William Sharp - http://www.sundown.pair.com/Sharp/WSVol_1/contents.htm

Wikipedia - William Sharp (writer)

Biography of William Sharp

by PoemHunter

William Sharp (12 September 1855 – 12 December 1905) was a Scottish writer, of poetry and literary biography in particular, who from 1893 wrote also as Fiona MacLeod, a pseudonym kept almost secret during his lifetime. He was also an editor of the poetry of Ossian, Walter Scott, Matthew Arnold, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Eugene Lee-Hamilton.

Sharp was born in Paisley and educated at Glasgow Academy and the University of Glasgow, which he attended 1871-1872 without completing a degree. In 1872 he contracted typhoid. During 1874-5 he worked in a Glasgow law office. His health broke down in 1876 and he was sent on a voyage to Australia. In 1878 he took a position in a bank in London.

He was introduced to Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Sir Noel Paton, and joined the Rossetti literary group; which included Hall Caine, Philip Bourke Marston and Swinburne. He married his cousin Elizabeth in 1884, and devoted himself to writing full time from 1891, travelling widely.

Also about this time, he developed an intensely romantic but perhaps asexual attachment to Edith Wingate Rinder, another writer of the consciously Celtic Edinburgh circle surrounding Patrick Geddes and "The Evergreen." It was to Rinder ("EWR") he attributed the inspiration for his writings as Fiona MacLeod thereafter, and to whom he dedicated his first MacLeod novel ("Pharais") in 1894. Sharp had a complex and ambivalent relationship with W. B. Yeats during the 1890s, as a central tension in the Celtic Revival. Yeats initially found MacLeod acceptable and Sharp not, and later fathomed their identity. Sharp found the dual personality an increasing strain.

On occasions when it was necessary for "Fiona MacLeod" to write to someone unaware of the dual identity, Sharp would dictate the text to his sister (Mary Beatrice Sharp), whose handwriting would then be passed off as Fiona's manuscript. During his MacLeod period, Sharp was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

He died (and is buried) at Castello di Maniace, Sicily. In 1910, Elizabeth Sharp published a biographical memoir attempting to explain the creative necessity behind the deception, and edited a complete edition of his works.

William Sharp's Works:

* Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and Study (1882)
* The Human Inheritance, The New Hope, Motherhood and Other Poems (1882)
* Sopistra and Other Poems (1884);
* Earth's Voices (1884) poems
* Sonnets of this century (1886) editor
* Sea-Music: An Anthology of Poems (1887)
* Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1887)
* Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy (1888)
* Sport of chance (1888) novel
* Life of Heinrich Heine (1888)
* American Sonnets (1889)
* Life of Robert Browning (1889)
* The Children of Tomorrow (1889)
* Sospiri di Roma (1891) poems
* Life of Joseph Severn (1892)
* A Fellowe and his Wife (1892)
* Flower o' the Vine (1892)
* Pagan Review (1892)
* Vistas (1894);
* Pharais (1894) novel as FM
* The Gipsy Christ and Other Tales (1895)
* Mountain Lovers (1895) novel as FM
* The Laughter of Peterkin (1895) as FM
* The Sin-Eater and Other Tales (1895) as FM
* Ecce puella and Other Prose Imaginings (1896)
* The Washer of the Ford (1896) novel as FM
* Fair Women in Painting and Poetry (1896)
* Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry (1896)
* By Sundown Shores (1900) as FM
* The Divine Adventure (1900) as FM
* Iona (1900) as FM
* From the Hills of Dream, Threnodies Songs and Later Poems (1901) as FM
* The Progress of Art in the Nineteenth century (1902)
* The House of Usna (1903) play as FM
* Literary Geography (1904)
* The Winged Destiny: Studies in the Spiritual History of the Gael (1904) as FM and dedicated to Dr John Goodchild
* The Immortal Hour (1908) play as FM

Robert Frost - (Swinging on) Birches

Poet Robert Frost

Birches

Related Poem Content Details

BY ROBERT FROST

When I see birches bend to left and right 

Across the lines of straighter darker trees, 

I like to think some boy's been swinging them. 

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay 

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them 

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning 

After a rain. They click upon themselves 

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored 

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. 

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 

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. 

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, 

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 

So low for long, they never right themselves: 

You may see their trunks arching in the woods 

Years afterwards, 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. 

But I was going to say when Truth broke in 

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm 

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. 

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. He learned all there was 

To learn about not launching out too soon 

And so not carrying the tree away 

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise 

To the top branches, climbing carefully 

With the same pains you use to fill a cup 

Up to the brim, and even above the brim. 

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, 

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. 

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 too much like a pathless wood 

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs 

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping 

From a twig's having lashed across it open. 

I'd like to get away from earth awhile 

And then come back to it and begin over. 

May no fate willfully misunderstand me 

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away 

Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: 

I don't know where it's likely to go better. 

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, 

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk 

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, 

But dipped its top and set me down again. 

That would be good both going and coming back. 

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost (1969)

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About the Author

Wikipedia - Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in America. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.[2] His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of the twentieth century,[3] Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution."[3] He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont.

Biographical References

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost

Poetry Foundation - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/robert-frost

Analysis of the Poem

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birches_(poem)

Summary

When the speaker (the poet himself) sees the birches being bent to left and right sides in contrast to straight trees, he likes to think that some boys have been swinging them. He then realizes that it is not the boys, rather the ice storms that bend the birches. On a winter morning, freezing rain covers the branches with ice, which then cracks and falls to the snow covered ground. The sunlight refracts on the ice crystals, making a brilliant display.

When the Truth again strikes the speaker, he still prefers his imagination of the boys swinging and bending the birches. In his imagination, the boy plays with the birches. The speaker says he also was a swinger of birches when he was a boy, and wishes to be so now. When he becomes weary of this world, and life becomes confused, he likes to go toward heaven by climbing a birch tree and then come back again because earth is the right place for love.

Robert Frost as a young man

Robert Frost as an old man

Analysis

This poem is written in blank verse with a particular emphasis on the “sound of sense.” For example, when Frost describes the cracking of the ice on the branches, his selections of syllables create a visceral sense of the action taking place:

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shellsShattering and avalanching on the snow crust —Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away…

Originally, this poem was called “Swinging Birches,” a title that perhaps provides a more accurate depiction of the subject. In writing this poem, Frost was inspired by his childhood experience with swinging on birches, which was a popular game for children in rural areas of New England during the time. Frost’s own children were avid “birch swingers,” as demonstrated by a selection from his daughter Lesley’s journal:

“On the way home, i climbed up a high birch and came down with it and i stopped in the air about three feet and pap cout me.”

In the poem, the act of swinging on birches is presented as a way to escape the hard rationality or “Truth” of the adult world, if only for a moment. As the boy climbs up the tree, he is climbing toward “heaven” and a place where his imagination can be free. The narrator explains that climbing a birch is an opportunity to “get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over.” A swinger is still grounded in the earth through the roots of the tree as he climbs, but he is able to reach beyond his normal life on the earth and reach for a higher plane of existence.

Frost highlights the narrator’s regret that he can no longer find this peace of mind from swinging on birches. Because he is an adult, he is unable to leave his responsibilities behind and climb toward heaven until he can start fresh on the earth. In fact, the narrator is not even able to enjoy the imagined view of a boy swinging in the birches. In the fourth line of the poem, he is forced to acknowledge the “Truth” of the birches: the bends are caused by winter storms, not by a boy swinging on them.

Significantly, the narrator’s desire to escape from the rational world is inconclusive. He wants to escape as a boy climbing toward heaven, but he also wants to return to the earth: both “going and coming back.” The freedom of imagination is appealing and wondrous, but the narrator still cannot avoid returning to “Truth” and his responsibilities on the ground; the escape is only a temporary one.

Overview

Written in conversational language, the poem constantly moves between imagination and fact, from reverie to reflection. In the opening, the speaker employs an explanation for how the birch trees were bent. He is pleased to think that some boys were swinging [on] them when he is suddenly reminded that it is actually the ice-storm that bends the trees. Thus, the poem makes some shift of thought in its description. An abrupt shift occurs when the speaker yearns to leave this earth because of its confusion and make a heaven-ward journey. But the speaker does not want to die by leaving earth forever. He wants to come back to this earth, because to the speaker, the earth is, though not perfect, a better place for going on. The speaker is not one who is ready to wait for the promise of afterlife. The love expressed here is for life and himself. This shows Frost's agnostic side where heaven is a fragile concept to him. This becomes clear when he says the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

Rich metaphoric thinking and imagery abounds the poem where Frost presents some sharp descriptions of natural phenomena.

Themes

The poem centers on various themes of balance, youth, spirituality, and natural world. The poem deals with the issue of how to reconcile between impulse and carefulness, between spontaneity and structure. This act of balancing remains a crucial theme in Frost's thought, and Frost's typical suggestion to this is to execute things in a way that requires control and skill – be it a question of climbing and swinging a Birch tree or an act of writing or any other issue of real-life. Youth also comes as a theme in this poem as the speaker imagines some boy despite coming across one.

Form

The poem is written in blank verse. The language is conversational (use of first person 'I' and second person 'You'.)

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GradeSaver

Robert Frost: Poems Summary and Analysis of "Birches" (1916)

When the narrator looks at the birch trees in the forest, he imagines that the arching bends in their branches are the result of a boy “swinging” on them. He realizes that the bends are actually caused by ice storms - the weight of the ice on the branches forces them to bend toward the ground - but he prefers his idea of the boy swinging on the branches, climbing up the tree trunks and swinging from side to side, from earth up to heaven. The narrator remembers when he used to swing on birches and wishes that he could return to those carefree days.

Analysis

This poem is written in blank verse with a particular emphasis on the “sound of sense.” For example, when Frost describes the cracking of the ice on the branches, his selections of syllables create a visceral sense of the action taking place: “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…”

Originally, this poem was called “Swinging Birches,” a title that perhaps provides a more accurate depiction of the subject. In writing this poem, Frost was inspired by his childhood experience with swinging on birches, which was a popular game for children in rural areas of New England during the time. Frost’s own children were avid “birch swingers,” as demonstrated by a selection from his daughter Lesley’s journal: “On the way home, i climbed up a hi birch and came down with it and i stopt in the air about three feet and pap cout me.”

In the poem, the act of swinging on birches is presented as a way to escape the hard rationality or “Truth” of the adult world, if only for a moment. As the boy climbs up the tree, he is climbing toward “heaven” and a place where his imagination can be free. The narrator explains that climbing a birch is an opportunity to “get away from earth awhile / And then come back to it and begin over.” A swinger is still grounded in the earth through the roots of the tree as he climbs, but he is able to reach beyond his normal life on the earth and reach for a higher plane of existence.

Frost highlights the narrator’s regret that he can no longer find this peace of mind from swinging on birches. Because he is an adult, he is unable to leave his responsibilities behind and climb toward heaven until he can start fresh on the earth. In fact, the narrator is not even able to enjoy the imagined view of a boy swinging in the birches. In the fourth line of the poem, he is forced to acknowledge the “Truth” of the birches: the bends are caused by winter storms, not by a boy swinging on them.

Significantly, the narrator’s desire to escape from the rational world is inconclusive. He wants to escape as a boy climbing toward heaven, but he also wants to return to the earth: both “going and coming back.” The freedom of imagination is appealing and wondrous, but the narrator still cannot avoid returning to “Truth” and his responsibilities on the ground; the escape is only a temporary one.

R.E. Slater - A Faith For All Seasons

A Faith For All Seasons

by R.E. Slater


In a distant time there lived a grizzled carpenter
known for his wisdom, love, and generosity,

where trade was plied in earnest craft

and living homilies bespoke the lives of men,

always in need their times and rhythms

though years sped by in their seasons,

where a humble workshop gripped its work

forging fire to iron for courage needed.

At the start this child-like craftsman
learned the cruelty of life’s wandering ways,
growing by trial and character in wisdom learned
offering love’s soft glows that glimmering shone,
lighting lean days ahead against hard times without
warming memories that melded faith to hope,
necessary for the steadiness needed to the
hard forges pressing down on flesh and blood.

As winters gave way to muddy springs, sowing to harvest,

rests to toils, laughter to tears, fasts to feasts,

so the rhythms of life were met in steady homage

by faith’s many colors a’washed a rare vibrancy,

sharing a Savior’s faithful presence in generous hand

able to turn a timbreled piece to glowing moonshine,

harden a pliant willow to withstand long winters

or carve a plain stick released its glowing artistry.

Hardy cradles were made for newborn life,

boughs were bent and woven for cushioned rest,

tables for service, shelves for care, doors for entry,

or fences to protect, stables for safety, troughs for feed,

a cane to walk, a roof staying rains fair and hard,

cupboards to bear life’s fraught necessaries,

all imagined, needed, or wanted were given in their time,

completing men’s journeys from dawn to eveningtide.

Even so, the seasons of faith, its greens and golds, reds or

blacks, purples or rose, shading color to calendar,

to the wheels of labor or laughter, rest or harrow,

grinding steadily away against human frailty,

reminding nothing is lost when done in love

for love is the forge where all lives dance,

built of song or mirth rising to the altars of life

unlocking a soul’s faith weaving its cradles and turns.

R.E. Slater

February 27, 2017

*Based on the Liturgical Church Calendar

"Using the structure of the liturgical calendar and the life of Jesus as inspiration I wished to explore faith as a work and  a practice in our lives as we struggle with morality and mortality. In our feeble faith we will struggle, yeah, too oftentimes  fail, and yet must learn humility. To laugh with God over our vulnerabilities while striving to honor Him in all that we say or do when seeking to live for our Lord and Savior even as He lived for us during His earthly life and for His heavenly Father. We do  this by living out a divine life of faith where the miraculous becomes ordinary even as the ordinary becomes sacred when imbued with the life of God who is faithful and our very hope for all our ‘morrows and for the world that lies ahead."

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References

Sounding the Seasons: Seventy sonnets for the Christian year,

by Malcolm Guite

Illustrations