Fire and Ice

for Robert Frost

“Fire and Ice” ©Chris Buczinsky

The poem, “Fire and Ice,” was written by Robert Frost, one of America’s most beloved poets and our United States Poet Laureate in 1958. It was first published in 1920 in Harper’s Magazine.

According to Jeffrey Meyers, one of Frost’s biographers, the poem was inspired by the 9th circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, where traitors are frozen in ice. But I have always loved the way Frost’s poems transcend our political fights and “Fire and Ice” is no exception.

Who among us, whatever our political leanings, is immune to desire and hate?

Anyway, here is the poem in its entirety, before Ice Agent interrupted Miss Fire’s recital with his pepper spray.

“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost

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.