It is easy to take this little poem of Robert Frost’s, justly celebrated for its laconic deftness, as no more than a pithy generalised reflection on human nature and overlook the fact that it is also saying something deeply personal about Frost’s own nature. ‘From what I’ve tasted of desire’ hints at problems with an ardent temperament more fully explored in his poem ‘The Subverted Flower’, while ‘I think I know enough of hate’ echoes his self-description elsewhere as ‘a good hater’. Under the folksy mask Frost was, perhaps more than most poets, a man of lacerating sensitivity, which is not surprising given that he was over forty before he achieved any recognition as a poet and even then had to endure the ill-informed condescension of critics like Edmund Wilson before his reputation became properly established.

Fire and Ice

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 know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost