Bits of Life 2

M-3 Words-900

Burning glass works but the monkey in the cage snatches it and destroys it. The lesson is obvious. The boy, despite being intelligent didn’t know that the monkey is in no position to understand the science behind the burning glass.

“It's knowing what to do with things that counts.”

This applies to all of us I believe. Like the boy, we face uneasy situations in life, of which we do not ever think and when we do not know how to deal with them.

Frost’s Fire and Ice has a special significance. Killers are killers whatever be their nature, hot or cold.

Both have their dangerous nature.

In Frost's 1923 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, New Hampshire, "Fire and Ice" is one of Frost's best-known and most anthologized poems.

The elements of nature, fire and ice are metaphors for the emotion of desire and the emotion of hatred.

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”.

The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABA ABC BCB

Have a look at the way Frost starts the poem on a casual narrative note slowly drawing our attention to the more important and seriously damaging nature of human emotions.

“Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.”

The tone of the poem is sarcastic, ironic and detached. Yet, he takes us through is an apocalyptic subject, i.e. the end of the world.

So I understand the world faces termination due either to desire or to hatred. His words reflect what we have been passing through for centuries. All those wars and attacks on innocent citizens of various countries of the world have been due to the two emotions he mentions.

His serves as warning to the warring nations regarding the end of the world. Look at the matter of fact way in which he delivers a serious outcome of the two vices that rule our nature.

Simplicity of language-

In simple language the poet talks about a deeply threatening problem that humanity faces. And more importantly, he certainly wants us to reflect on the serious result of such qualities taking an upper hand in destroying creation by the human beings.

Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening-

We have read this extremely casual and charming poem in school and college too.
Despite its charm, the poet says he cannot stop by the woods as they fill with snow for a long time. He cannot ignore his duties.
But nature is too beautiful for him to continue at that point of time. It was a winter evening cold and gray.

“The woods are dark deep and lovely.”

Even as the day was about to set, the poet’s sense of aesthetic plays a crucial role and makes him stop by the “snowy woods.”
The adjectival use is apt and catches our imagination to the quick. The image is visual and at once is brought to our mind. Snow-clad woods flash on our mind.

Is there a note of guilt when the poet says,

“His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here “

However, it looks justified because we convince ourselves that the owner of the woods owns just the woods and not the whole terrain.
The horse which he rides has a role too, an important one so to say.

“My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near”

The poet attributes the horse with “thinking”.

He makes it think of his stopping by the woods when the evening is cold and dark. And there is nothing but a “frozen lake” and no farmhouse anywhere in sight. Even then he stopped. That’s “queer” for the horse.

Besides the sound of “his harness bells” and the

“the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake,” there is silence all around.

The lonely and dreary landscape is brought to our notice quite effectively.

The New England climate in the winter is long, cold, and snowy, with a humid continental climate that features significant snowfall (60–120+ inches inland) and temperatures often dropping below freezing. This is particularly unbearable in the north of the state.

With his experience of living in New Hampshire country must have been particularly telling in winters.

There are several underlying themes in the poems. We need to glean and gather them with a keen analytic and sensitive mind.

Robert Frost never sounded more than casual or conversational in the poem. Yet, all features such as the unfriendly climate, the society, and his conflict between duty and the denial of time to appreciate beauty come to fore.

"Man was born free yet is chained everywhere”. Isn’t that so? Frost is no exception to that rule.
It is transparent in the last lines of the poem.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

I suppose he had a hard life in the country, farming and writing poetry in the early mornings. Despite his poetic talent, I think he paid attention to all his duties as well.
Who knows? He did say in an interview (Robert Frost Interview+Poetry reading 1952) that many have “limited” or “insufficient knowledge”