Robert Frost

Robert Frost:- 

(March 26, 1874- January 29, 1963)

The poem is a work of eschatology writing about the end of the world and poses two possible causes for this end: fire and ice. The speaker uses these natural elements as symbols for desire and hatred, respectively, arguing that both emotions left unchecked have the capacity to destroy civilization itself.

Theme of the Poem :-

The theme of the poem Fire and Ice is that the world will be destroyed some day and the poet is of the views that there will be two reasons for its destruction; fire and ice. Fire symbolises greed and ice symbolises coldness in relation and hate.

The poet says that the world is bound to destroy on day. However it will be destroyed by fire i.e. greed which makes a person do all the inhumane blunders. However, if the world would have to perish twice, then coldness i.e. hate would be responsible for its destruction.

So, greed and hate are the greatest enemies of humanity and the poet suggests us to never adopt them.

Figure of Speech :-

Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice” uses figures of speech such as paradox, synecdoche, understatement and alliteration. A paradox has contradictory elements that might be true, a synecdoche is a part of something that represents its whole, an understatement under-emphasizes and an alliteration has lines starting with the same sound.

In the poem, the line “But if it had to perish twice” is a paradox, while synecdoche use is in “The heat of love and the cold of hate are seen as having cataclysmic power.” In addition, there is alliteration in the first two lines that begin with “Some say”, while the final word “suffice” underlines the poem’s understatement with irony. With the destructive nature of human emotions as its theme, the lyric poem gives a nod to Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” in its nine lines.

1. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening :-

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42891/stopping-by-woods-on-a-snowy-evening

The Poem :-

If you've ever seen or experienced snow, you've probably taken a few minutes to marvel at its beauty. Possibly you were drawn to this element of nature that is at once soothing to look at and dark in its association with cold, winter, and the silence of nature. In literature, the seasons of nature are often used to explore the relationship between life and death, and one of Robert Frost's most famous poems, 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,' written in 1922, captures this pull between life and death, man, and nature.

Poem Summary :-

The speaker in the poem is traveling at night through the snow and pauses with his horse near the woods by a neighbor's house to watch the snow falling around him. His horse shakes his harness bells, questioning the pause; perhaps this place isn't on their usual route, or he is curious that there doesn't appear to be a farmhouse nearby.

The speaker continues to stand near the woods, attracted by the deep, dark silence of his surroundings. He feels compelled to move further into the snowy woods, but he ultimately decides to continue, concluding with perhaps the most famous lines of the poem: 'But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.'

Themes :-

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," which perhaps indicates that he intended the work in its simplicity to be accepted "as is," with a sort of trust or faith that it means exactly what it says: a single moment out of time, a snowy evening illustrated by words. Yet there are themes present in the work, whether or not Frost intended for them to be analysed or included at all.

Humans Verses Nature :-

The theme of humans versus nature is quite common in many of Frost's poems. He seemed especially taken with crafting a lovely natural scene organic, untouched, unaffected and then introducing an external force, often a person or a man-made structure, like a cabin or a path. Even poems that seem to focus solely on the untouched natural world have an intruder of sorts in their midst: that is, the speaker, who describes the scene in the first place.

In "Stopping by Woods," the speaker and his horse pause at the edge of a wooded area that belongs to someone the narrator knows, and from the first line of the poem, humans and nature are in conflict: "Whose woods" juxtaposes the tension between, on the one hand, a natural place, this forested area that perhaps should not be owned or overseen by anyone and on the other hand, the indication that this acreage is, in fact, owned. That the narrator himself with his horse is an intrusion into the otherwise idyllic dark, snowy scene is another contrast, another tension made tangible.

Desire Versus Obligation :-

The narrator describes the woods with careful attention to detail: watching the woods "fill up with snow" and the soft impressions of sounds, "of easy wind and downy flake", where there is otherwise only the preternatural stillness of the natural world thus far, untouched by movement or noise from an outside force. That the narrator is so clear and delicate in his description underscores the longing he feels toward visiting the woods, the desire he has to remain watching or even to explore that which is "lovely, dark and deep".

Secrets :-

Promises are not the only things that one keeps. Secrets, both implicit and explicit, are another. And there is something secretive, some uncertain thread in the tone of the poem: the narrator thinks he knows to whom the woods belong; he has stopped somewhat clandestinely just beyond the border of the other man's woods, even to the surprise of his (the narrator's) horse, who is quite probably used to going right onward, home for feed and warmth ; this is, it turns out, "the darkest evening of the year", which comes with its own mystery.

It is almost as though the narrator had something on his mind when he paused by the woods, something about which he is deep in thought that he does not clearly delineate to the reader (except for the final stanza about keeping promises and miles yet to go) but that weighs enough on him to draw him to a dazed halt at the edge of these woods.

Figures of speech :-

Figures of speech are words used in a non-literal sense. In this poem, Frost is using literary devices or figures of speech to try to make a larger point about life. When he says, for instance, that he "thinks" he knows these woods, the word "thinks" suggests he doesn't really know them at all, for all that he passed them a thousand times. Of course, in a literal sense he knows them as a familiar landmark. The poem, however, is suggesting a different, deeper kind of knowing beyond the literal that only emerges when we take the time to stop and really see a scene we might have passed too many times to count.

"Downy flake" is a figure of speech. The flakes of snow falling are not literally made of down or soft bird feathers. They are made of frozen water. But by likening them to down, the narrator is trying to convey a sense of the dreamy beauty of the scene.

Likewise, in a literal sense, it is simply a waste of words to repeat the last line of the poem: "And miles to go before I sleep." Why would he do that? We have already heard the line. Repeating it, however, is a literary device. The poet doesn't have any reason to do this, except that he is trying to communicate a deeper truth. He repeats the lines, perhaps to indicate how very unwilling he is to leave a beautiful scene. He also repeats the line to emphasize, perhaps, that life's most important moments are found in the spaces between more "important" tasks.