Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice

By: Robert Frost

“Fire and Ice,” by the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963), is typical of this writer’s work in many ways, including in its clarity and wit, as well as in its plain sentence structure, use of rhyme, and use of meter during a period when all three were often not in fashion.

Throughout the poem, Frost uses iambic meter, a kind of rhythm in which odd syllables are unaccented but even syllables are stressed (as in rebel). Iambic meter is perhaps the most common meter in all English poetry, partly because iambic rhythms come closest to the rhythms of normal, everyday speech. Many of Frost’s poems are deliberately intended to seem colloquial, relaxed, and common in the ways they move and sound, and “Fire and Ice” is no exception. Even the title seems plain, straightforward, and lacking in mystery. The title also accurately foreshadows the subjects of the work. Frost makes an implied promise in the title and then fulfils that promise in the poem. From the title alone, we don’t know exactly what he will do with the ideas of “fire and ice,” but we can be confident that those topics will be examined in some way. The title is not meant to trick, deceive, or be merely clever.

The poem opens by presenting the opinions of others before the speaker presents his own. Yet the opinions of others are conflicting and contrasting, and so the speaker creates some momentary suspense: which alternative will the speaker endorse (if either)? Will he make a clear choice? Will he offer a third or fourth possibility? Or will he (as in fact he does) somehow endorse both alternatives? At first the speaker seems to endorse the idea that the world will end in a massive blaze of fire. Then, however, he seems to endorse as well the alternative idea that the world will end by being frozen in ice. Part of the wit of the poem, in fact, depends on its pronounced sense of...