We’ve heard that coloring pages can be a good way to alleviate stress. And of course, we know that poetry is also a fine way to reduce stress. So what could be better than putting the two together? This year, we’re introducing a series of fun Coloring Page Poems that you can print, color, and doodle your way to relaxation and stress relief. Today, we offer Christina Rossetti’s Brother Bruin.
Download a printable coloring page poem of Birches by Robert Frost now.
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
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.
—Robert Frost
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Browse more Robert Frost
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Photo by Dave Nakayama, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post and illustration by LW Lindquist.
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How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
LW Willingham
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[…] waiting for your markers, crayons, or colored pencils. The coloring book features favorites such as Frost’s Birches, Lawrence’s Piano, Poe’s Annabel Lee, Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, and […]
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[…] I have never minded this: when people connect with me to get somewhere. After all, I appreciate the people who have given to me, to forward my career, and I am happy to do the same for others. But it is always a good reminder, for both myself and those I connect with… writing indeed takes time and standing in line. Even for someone who seems like a shoe-in. Even for a Robert Frost. […]
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[…] poem Birches was an early inspiration for the original Red Brick Poetry box, and the line “So was I once […]
Rick Maxson says
One of my favorite poems by Frost. Love the cobweb and I love the baseball cap hanging from the broken branch. What a great way to exemplify “Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,/Whose only play was what he found himself,”
LW Lindquist says
Thanks Rick. I have to confess not being familiar with the poem until it was suggested as a good coloring page subject. Having spent a good deal of time by myself in the woods as a kid (despite living not ‘too far from town’ but actually in the city), I love that line.
Sandra Heska King says
I love birch trees. I remember peeling bark to make little canoes. I’d never read this poem before.