Okay, I hate to cement my reputation as Eratosphere's most prurient member, but since that last line of Frost's has struck other readers as odd or off somehow, I'll say it: "birchings" were once a common form of corporal punishment, and were also (and still are) a turn-on for some people. I've sometimes wondered if Frost, who wrote "Now no joy but lacks salt / That is not dashed with pain," was making a private joke. In some people's eyes it may be unfair to suggest such a thing about someone who's dead and can't "defend" himself - but I don't think of unusual sexual preferences as crimes that need defending against, so the only qualm I feel about it is that it's such a terrible, terrible pun. But it's conceivable that someone who did in fact, er, swing that way, who lived in a time when such things were considered shocking and shameful, would enjoy flirting with danger by slyly not-quite-outing himself. Anyway, crazy or not, it's just a thought.
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