Birches 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. Ice-storms do that. 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 they in their turn But make no sound. You’d think there was a hidden brook That would break into song, at any moment. But it was a young man’s dreaming.

The trees are bare, and the sun, overhead Is refracted, and yet the shadow falls By their bending.

You are not considered to cease But to begin again. To keep on giving.

We are like those trees. The ice not so transparent. But like them, we have veiled our =creation. We have held the world so close that we cease to gain. Only like the trees of which we became We once were approached, achieve.

But we are springing to the new bright world again. Let us re-examine the every bud and leave. This one is ours, for behold! a footstep! That the route may find forgiveness in slight. The trail gets darker, the woods intact, The way into verification. A place to ensue.

• Robert Frost