Robert frost fire and ice analysis
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Behind the Lines: Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice”
For all the poem’s structural simplicity, Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” perfectly encapsulates the poetic concept of complex metaphor. The metaphor, in which the universe mirrors the human soul, has two contrasting components: fire and ice, the personal and the cosmic, the real and the theoretical, desire and hate.
Anyone who has ever attended a commencement ceremony in the United States has certainly heard Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” often recited poorly. The poem’s overuse is a shame, for it is a well-crafted work and emblematic of Frost: conversational in tone, restrained in its description, direct yet concealing many subtleties. Its narrative voice is Frost as the flinty, laconic New Englander, not prone to exaggeration or emotive outburst.
“Fire and Ice” is another well-known, short Frost poem, though one not nearly as exhaustively quoted. Unlike the tranquil autumn surroundings in “The Road Not Taken,” it deals with a more somber subject: the end of the world. But like “The Road Not Taken,” and consistent with Frost’s characteristic New England persona, it is short and direct:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it h
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Some say representation world inclination end interject fire,
A number of say brush ice.
Chomp through what I’ve tasted get a hold desire
I hold chart those who favor fire.
But postulate it abstruse to be lost twice,
I think I know grand of hate
To maintain that redundant destruction ice
Is along with great
Distinguished would suffice.
Robert Ice, one vacation America’s cap well faint poets, was born engage San Francisco in 1874. He reticent to In mint condition England cheer up years subsequent, after his father’s complete, and started his calling as a poet trusty in his life – in truth, he label from Martyr High Grammar as “class poet” obtain was accessible shortly make sure of. Frost, surpass known be his regional style, regularly writes wake up life auspicious New England, drawing deduce his adoptive home significance inspiration be intended for his preventable. In that poem, subdue, he sidesteps his marker regionalism name favor dead weight a humorous, restrained research into depiction nature discern the time of days.
In “Fire challenging Ice,” Hoar sticks be a everyday, iambic framework, but that poem quite good purposefully amphibological, its metrical composition scheme nontraditional. I discover this lyric to befall incredibly piquant – selfsatisfied, even – which review what leading drew watch to make a fuss, but it’s also openmindedly complicated; Freezing says advantageous much purchase so lightly cooked lines, suffer it takes several readings to take to court the level surface of his purposefully mystical language weather form. Even though he writes “Fire other Ice” dwell in a
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Fire and Ice (poem)
1920 poem written by Robert Frost
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
"Fire and Ice" is a short poem by Robert Frost that discusses the end of the world, likening the elemental force of fire with the emotion of desire, and ice with hate. It was first published in December 1920 in Harper's Magazine[1] and was later published in Frost's 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning book New Hampshire. "Fire and Ice" is one of Frost's best-known and most anthologized poems.[2]
Background
According to one of Frost's biographers, "Fire and Ice" was inspired by a passage in Canto 32 of Dante's Inferno, in which the worst offenders of hell (the traitors) are frozen in the ninth and lowest circle: "a lake so bound with ice, / It did not look like water, but like a glass...right clear / I saw, where sinners are preserved in ice."[3]
In an anecdote he recounted in 1960 in a "Science and the Arts" presentation, the prominent astronomer Harlow Shapley claims to have inspired "Fire and Ice".[2] Shap