"Birches" Robert Frost

The poem "Birches" by Robert Frost is a poem of imagination, and escapism, earth and heaven, youth and age. The speaker in the poem seems to be in a nostalgic state of mind and having a conflict within himself. I feel as if the tree is representing his life as he has become weary through time like the tree "I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay" the boy he imagines would represent the youth that he craves again. The Earthly elements that had throughout time bent the tree over to me symbolizes life's trials, at some point the speaker has to accept life as it is, to come back to reality so to speak.  "But I was going to say when Truth broke in/With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm" her we see the element of Earth as he refers to mother nature. I feel this poem in many ways relates to "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop in a sense were it is human vs nature and the aging of nature. Nature doesn't understand time but through nature humans can establish some kind of empathy or gain insight to their own lives. The feel the speaker finds his sanity through imagination and death. "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:" For he has grown old and weary like the tree through but choose to escape it by imagining the youthful will to live.