Saturday, January 22, 2011

Ice Storm

We had an ice storm this week. Here is the birch tree in our front yard. It was hazardous and yet looking at this tree glazed with ice I was reminded of Robert Frost's poem Birches.

Here are the opening lines of his poem.

 

 

 

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:

 

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