The Birthplace
The Birthplace - meaning Summary
Childhood and a Changing Place
The poem recollects a childhood home on a mountain where the speaker’s father shaped the land and raised a large family. It registers domestic industry and a briefly intimate relationship between the children and the mountain, which is gently personified as receptive and affectionate. The tone shifts to recognition that time has altered everything: the children have grown or left, names are forgotten, and the mountain has been reclaimed by trees. The poem centers on memory, the passage of time, and the impermanence of human presence in a changing landscape.
Read Complete AnalysesHere further up the mountain slope Than there was every any hope, My father built, enclosed a spring, Strung chains of wall round everything, Subdued the growth of earth to grass, And brought our various lives to pass. A dozen girls and boys we were. The mountain seemed to like the stir, And made of us a little while- With always something in her smile. Today she wouldn’t know our name. (No girl’s, of course, has stayed the same.) The mountain pushed us off her knees. And now her lap is full of trees.
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