"Birches" -- Robert Frost

This poem starts off with the narrator commenting about birch trees that have grown bent out of shape, rather than straight up like most trees. He then discusses in great detail the difference in the way the trees become bent due to ice build up compared to how they look when they were used to swing on. 

"Ice-storms do that. 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-coloured
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."

I found this section of the poem to be very visual and gives me a clear image of what the trees look like after a heavy snow and ice storm. The narrator then goes on to reminisce about when he was younger and the poem seems to go into a stage of contrasting the realism of life that comes with age and the imagination of youth. He describes in detail the act of swinging on the birches, indicating the he himself likely swung on birches as a child. He also seems to want to go back to his childhood days and relive his youth.

Vocabulary:

A. bracken (line 14) -- noun

1.

a large fern or brake, esp. Pteridium aquilinum.

2.

a cluster or thicket of such ferns; an area overgrown with ferns and 

shrubs.