124 PA RT T W O
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.The country-store cracker-barrel lingo (with hints of Emily Dickinson) can
fool us into missing that rude halving from line one to two, plus the sly rhymes.
Having gotten used to “fire” and “ice,” then “perish twice,” rhymewise we
think we know enough to expect “mice” or “lice,” or “mire” or “ire,” when out
of nowhere comes—“hate.” Wondering Where does “hate” come from? we ’re
looking deep into rhyme and beyond. Again the rhyme resumes, on “ice,” but
then “hate” abruptly echoes with chilling banality in “also great,” while “ice”
prompts the picky, killing formality of “would suffice.” A few lines and the
sermon’s done, ice is it.
Another wisdom poem from the same year, “Dust of Snow,” pleased Frost
for its curt lines and plain rhyme.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.From the local scene a fluent sentence draws black and white and green toward
a small but saving epiphany. You could convert this into haiku:
Crow in a hemlock
shakes down dust of snow on me
—this day saved, in part.But “Poetry is what gets lost in translation,” Frost once remarked. He hasn’t
put “some” there just to fill out the line, hasn’t dragged in “mood” or “rued”
just for the rhyme. And if “rued” sounds forced, remember an old usage, “Oh,
you’ll rue the day... ,” which gives this saving moment a home truth.
Frost ’s most notorious rhyme is really a repetition, closing a rhyme-spurred
musing on landscape and weather. Having spent all one summer night on a long
satiric poem, at dawn he gave up and wrote on the winter solstice. He liked to