Loneliness, Love and the Longing to Reach the Birches Robert Frost uses the poem Birches to illustrate his personal experience of three things through the bending of the trees. The three things are loneliness, love and the desire to achieve. Frost's description of loneliness is given immediately after he first refers to himself with his specific description in line 20. There he states "I'd rather some boy bend (the birches)." He describes the loneliness of his youthful lifestyle by writing that he was a boy on a farm "too far from town to learn baseball, whose only game was found in himself." The most exciting thing for him to do was swing birch trees. His attempts to "conquer" solitude were demonstrated through the vehicle of birch trees. Frost goes on to describe perhaps the most valuable lesson he learned as a child trying to overcome loneliness, the lesson that "practice makes perfect." Frost states: “He always kept his balance at the top of the branches by climbing carefully with…pains…Then he would launch himself outwards, feet first, with a rustle kicking down through the air until to the ground." Here he learned that there are times in life when you can conquer a situation and then be done with it. Then you will fly away with joy knowing that you have conquered it. Love is one of those situations. Frost was apparently hurt by love before stating, "I would walk away from the earth and then return to it and start again. May no fate willfully misunderstand me and half-grant me what I desire and take me away never to return." Apparently his heart was ripped out by a lost love. She may think this is because he submitted to her in a vulnerable way. If he had the chance to do it again, maybe he wouldn't submit so much to the next thief. However, he definitely has the desire to achieve love. His desire to achieve is described when he states how he would like to achieve love. Frost states, “I would like to climb a birch tree, and climb… towards the sky (the top or the height of his desire, be it love or something else) until the tree (or the world) could not bear more, but he dipped the tip and put me back down." Perhaps it is stating that whatever you pursue in life, use the world as a tree that you can climb to the top, but realize that at some point the world will no longer be able to support you and you will no longer be able to support you. to move on to something else. Frost concludes his poem by stating his satisfaction at overcoming loneliness and love and benefiting from the desire to achieve by writing, "You could do worse than be a birch swinger".".