Robert Frost often includes natural imagery in his poems. His intent is usually to show how closely man is bound to the natural environment in which he lives. Other frequently studied poems like “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” are completely constructed around images of the speakers' immediate environment.
The first simile in the poem, “like girls on hands and knees,” comes about a third the way through the poem:
<span>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. </span>
Part of Frost's aim has been to show that the birches are vulnerable to the effect “swinging” by boys. This vulnerability is emphasized by comparing them to girls—the trees are delicate, like the girls, but also beautiful in their way.
The second simile comes about two-thirds through the poem. The poem has evolved by this point—Frost has become more serious. In this simile, “like a pathless wood,” Frost is saying that sometimes life becomes difficult, filled with worries and decisions that have no clear answer:
<span>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. </span>
He uses the simile to compare the physical pain of being cut by a twig to the distress caused by life's cares, and goes so far as to suggest he would like to “get away from Earth awhile.”
