Fire and Ice · Class 10 English · First Flight Poetry: 60 flashcards

Robert Frost — who also wrote 'Dust of Snow' in the same chapter of this book.

Nine lines, in a single block. There is no stanza break anywhere in it.

With a reported debate — some people say the world will end in fire, and others say it will end in ice. Frost walks into an argument that is already going on.

He holds with those who favour fire — and his reason is personal rather than scientific: it comes from what he has tasted of desire.

Because it is physical. Desire is something the speaker claims to have had in his mouth, not something he has studied or read about — so the poem's authority is personal from its third line onwards.

The poem turns on the word 'but'. If the world had to perish twice, a second ending would be needed — and the speaker has a candidate ready.

Die.

That his experience of hatred is enough to let him judge ice equally powerful as a means of destruction — and that it would be quite adequate for the purpose.

It is glossed as 'be sufficient'. It is the coldest word in the poem — the language of something being adequate for a job, used about the destruction of the world.

Because a poem about the end of everything that ended on a word like 'destroy' would be shouting. This one shrugs, and the shrug is far more frightening.

Only experience — what he has tasted of desire and what he knows enough of in hate. There is no science, no scripture and no argument anywhere in the poem.

Four moves: the reported debate; his vote for fire; the second thought introduced by 'but'; and the verdict that ice would do just as well.

Most are eight syllables, but three are half that — the second line and the last two. So the poem physically contracts as it approaches its end.

Because it happens exactly where the poem turns to ice. The lines get shorter, colder and flatter and then stop — a poem about freezing that ends by freezing.

There is nowhere to pause. The debate, the vote, the second thought and the verdict run into one another, so the whole poem feels like a single spoken remark rather than a composition.

Entirely reasonable. He weighs an option, states a preference, concedes an alternative and closes — the tone of somebody choosing between two routes to a town, applied to the destruction of the world.

The ending itself. There is no burning city, no frozen sea and no last human being — the apocalypse here is entirely abstract, two nouns and what they are made to stand for.

Whether you believe the world will one day come to an end, and what you imagine would follow if our sun either exploded from heat or slowly lost all its warmth.

Because the poem is not about the sun at all. Every reason the speaker gives is about human feeling, so a science answer would miss the poem entirely.

'Fire' — at the end of the first line and again at the end of the fourth.

What 'fire' and 'ice' stand for — and it supplies twelve words to help: greed, avarice, cruelty, lust, conflict, fury, intolerance, rigidity, insensitivity, coldness, indifference and hatred.

Greed, avarice, cruelty, lust, conflict and fury — the hot feelings, the ones that want, act and consume.

Intolerance, rigidity, insensitivity, coldness, indifference and hatred — the cold feelings, the ones that refuse and harden.

Appetite. Greed, avarice and lust want; cruelty and fury act; conflict is what happens when two appetites meet. All of them consume, including the person who has them.

Refusal. Intolerance and rigidity refuse to bend, insensitivity and coldness refuse to feel, indifference refuses to care — and hatred is what all of that hardens into.

Desire, which stands behind fire, and hate, which stands behind ice. Everything in the textbook's list is a variation on one or the other.

Because desire is larger and more ordinary. Greed is something other people have; desire is something everybody admits to — so the word cannot be pushed away from oneself.

Because hate is the strongest word in the cold group, and the speaker claims to know enough of it — a startling thing to say about oneself, and meant to be.

No. It never says that fire stands for desire; it simply places the two words near each other and lets the reader connect them. That is exactly why the textbook has to supply a list.

Because 'the world will end in greed, or possibly indifference' would be a lecture. Fire and ice make the destruction physical — greed really does burn and indifference really does freeze — and the metaphor does the arguing in two syllables.

Fire and ice are not human-scale things; they are the forces that end worlds. Attaching them to feelings anybody can have makes an ordinary emotion equal to a planetary event.

That it is a human matter. There is no comet, no god and no exploding sun — the world does not end because of something that happens to human beings but because of something they are.

Because both feelings are familiar. Nobody has never wanted anything badly or gone cold on somebody, and the poem quietly points this out by having its speaker claim both from experience.

Yes. The poem begins hot and ends cold, so the cold verdict is the one left in the reader's ear — and it is delivered in the flattest words in the poem.

Extreme greed for wealth — the word in the textbook's list a student is most likely to need to look up.

Because saying that fire means greed turns an open poem into a locked box, and loses the reason it can still be read in a dozen ways a century later.

Name desire and hate as the poem's own two feelings; sort the textbook's twelve words into the hot and cold groups; say why elements are used instead of the emotions; and make the point that the cause of the ending is human.

Fire — or rather desire, which stands behind it. Of ice he says only that he knows enough of hate.

Every item on it can be shown by doing nothing at all — refusing to bend, refusing to feel, refusing to care.

It is what happens when two appetites meet. Like the rest of the hot list, it consumes — it is the collision of wanting with wanting.

aba abc bcb — written as one run, a-b-a-a-b-c-b-c-b across nine lines.

Fire, ice, desire, fire, twice, hate, ice, great, suffice.

Only three — and the third does not appear until line six, so for more than half the poem there are just two sounds, exactly as there are only two options.

Fire, desire and fire. The element and the feeling are tied together by sound three times in four lines, so the ear makes the identification before the reader works it out.

Ice, twice, ice and suffice — entering at line two, returning at five and seven, and taking the last word of the poem.

It carries three of the last five line-endings, including the final one. The poem votes for fire in its argument but gives ice the last sound in the ear.

Hate and great — only two lines, arriving late, and both belonging to the ice half of the poem.

They interlock rather than being blocked into separate halves. The fire rhymes and the ice rhymes thread through each other from line two onwards.

A blocked scheme would stage a debate between two sides. A woven one holds the contrast inside a single voice turning a question over — which is what a mind weighing two bad options actually sounds like.

A linked three-line rhyme scheme, used by Dante throughout the Inferno — a poem whose lowest circle of hell is not fire but ice. Frost's interlocking pattern is a loose version of it, and critics often note the echo.

Line two and the last two. Most lines run to eight syllables; these three run to four, so the b-rhyme's final appearances come in the shortest lines and the poem narrows as it cools.

Conversational and understated. The voice reports an argument, states a preference, raises an objection to itself and concedes, and nothing in the diction is raised or ornamental.

Saying far less than the subject deserves. The poem's closing verdict — that ice is also great and would suffice — is a textbook example, and 'suffice' is the flattest word in the poem.

Because its power comes from how little it raises its voice. A loud poem about the apocalypse is forgettable; this one is quiet, and that is precisely why it lasts.

Give the scheme as aba abc bcb; name at least four rhyme words to prove you looked; then explain the effect — the a-rhyme fuses fire with desire, the b-rhyme carries ice to the final word, and the interlocking keeps the two ideas inside one another.

The reported debate; the preference for fire, from desire; the turn at 'but'; the verdict that hate makes ice sufficient; and a paragraph of form — nine lines in one block, aba abc bcb, the shrinking last lines and the flatness of 'suffice'.

Because it is an identical rhyme — the same word rhyming with itself — which English poets normally avoid. Here it hammers the fire-desire connection home.

That it is one of the ways the meaning is delivered. Two words that chime begin to feel related, and Frost uses that deliberately to tie fire to desire.

'Suffice' — the very last word, carrying the b-rhyme and ending a four-syllable line.

Four syllables — and it settles the fate of the world.