The Philosophy of the BirchesThe philosophy expressed in "The Birches" poses no threat to popular values ​​or beliefs, and it is so appealing that many readers have considered the poem a leader -work. Among Frost's most famous works, perhaps only "Stopping at Woods on a Snowy Evening" ranks ahead of her. Yet for critics like Brooks and Squires, the character's philosophical stance in "Birches" is a serious weakness. . .]The didactic and philosophical element that some critics have attacked strikes others as the very core of Frost's virtue.[. . .]Perhaps impartial observers can accept the idea that "Birches" is neither as bad as its most bitter opponents suggest, nor as good as its most adoring supporters claim.[. . .]"Birches". . . contains three fairly long descriptions that do not involve unusual perspectives. In fact, the poem's most original and distinctive insight - the passage dealing with ice on the trees (ll. 5-14) - is undermined by both the self-consciousness of its final line ("One could thinking that the inner dome of the sky had fallen") and by the two much more conventionally perceived environments which follow it: the rural childhood of the birch swinger (ll. 23-40) and the "pathless wood", which represents the "considerations" of life (44-47) Accordingly, the poem's fiery final lines—its final statements about life, death, and human aspiration—do not arise from any particular experience. instead, they are presented as doctrines that we must accept or reject on the basis of our credibility in the speaker as a wise countryman whose familiarity with birches, ice storms, and trackless woods gives him a authority as a philosopher Since in "Birches" the natural object - tree, ice crystal, pathless wood, etc. - functions as evidence of the speaker's hardiness, Frost has no need for extraordinary perspectives, and hence the poem does little to convince us that an "experience", to use In [Robert's] formulation ] Langbaum, "it actually happens that the object is seen and not simply remembered from a public or abstract vision of it." This is not to say that the poem contains any brilliant descriptive passages (particularly memorable are the snapping, shattering and shattering ice crystals in lines 7-11 and the boy's laborious ascent and sudden, exhilarating descent into the lines 35-40), and undoubtedly, the final lines offer an engaging exegesis of birch swinging as a way of life. But even though we learn a lot about this speaker's beliefs and preferences, we ultimately discover that he has not revealed himself as deeply as the speaker does in "After Apple-Picking"..