I WALKED down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.
The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.
The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.
Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!-
All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flower’s backs.
They might be good for garden things
To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat’s-cradle strings,
And lift themselves up off the ground.
Small good to anything growing wild,
They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
And since it was coming up had to come.
This poem was hard to understand the meaning.
I need help with my essay and one of the poems is “Pea Brush” by Robert Frost and I need to know the rhyme scheme!
The meaning I take from Frost’s poem is a very literal one. Someone has cut down a birch tree and suggested he come and clean up the branches because he can use them to set his peas to climb on them in his garden. He is a natural observer of nature’s ways and he sees that if he doesn’t remove the downed brush soon, it will impede the growth of the new flowers that are already coming up beneath them. He is killing two birds with one stone, both cleaning up for the sake of what’s beneath, and taking home what can be utilized. It can be a metaphor for thriftiness, good stewardship, environmental awareness, etc, etc, and definitely is a poem that emphasises that we should make hay while the sun shines, not just let things go to seed. Don’t procrastinate, keep working, the good work of the world revolves on such principles. I find it to be an upbeat and pragmatic message.
I have to write a response on this poem and the other comment says that is very hard to analyze. I learned that it means that cutting down birch trees is crushing the wild trillium flowers. So, stop to take a look at nature!
it is very hard to analyze