Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
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.
1920
So this may be the lit geek in me, but I have also started thinking about several different Emily Dickinson poems as well as the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. All of them seem to describe an acute uncertainty about the end (of life, of the world); they are certain that they know nothing and it's frustrating. Recently I've been thinking it's almost calming not knowing, but sometimes the not knowing how or when is worse than what could happen.
so if people want to read more (and reading is always good) I'll post more poems and excerpts from the play that have to do with the not knowing, but knowing that we will end.
sorry if that didn't make sense, but it did in my head.
by Robert Frost
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.
1920
So this may be the lit geek in me, but I have also started thinking about several different Emily Dickinson poems as well as the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett. All of them seem to describe an acute uncertainty about the end (of life, of the world); they are certain that they know nothing and it's frustrating. Recently I've been thinking it's almost calming not knowing, but sometimes the not knowing how or when is worse than what could happen.
so if people want to read more (and reading is always good) I'll post more poems and excerpts from the play that have to do with the not knowing, but knowing that we will end.
sorry if that didn't make sense, but it did in my head.
posted by sarahgreeneyes at 9:00 AM
2 Comments:
yes yes, please post more poems. This is a great perspective on "the end"
thanks sarah!!
I think certainly Yeats' "The Second Coming" has to be considered. I'll skip any interpretation, because I think it's rich enough that you can all enter it on your own. In one sense, I think one actually has to defeat a poem like this to begin working in the same territory, because it's so over-powering (and so imbedded in a very particular set of cultural notions):
W.B. Yeats
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
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