Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.

The poem opens with two proposed ways the world could end. The speaker relates fire to desire and ice to hatred, bringing a discussion of planetary destruction into the scale of human emotions. After first siding with fire, he grants ice an equal capacity for destruction.

Both consuming desire and cold hatred can destroy. The apparently simple choice between physical elements becomes a comparison of destructive human passions.

Read as a literal scientific prediction, the opening loses the comparison with desire and hatred that follows. Nor does the speaker simply decide that fire alone is dangerous: the close gives ice its own destructive sufficiency.

Death, Nature

• Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. (not found) Aristotle
• Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. (not found) Marcus Aurelius
• The poet is a pretender. Fernando Pessoa
• I have within me all the dreams of the world. Fernando Pessoa
• Myth is the nothing that is everything. Fernando Pessoa

Robert Frost, New Hampshire (1923), ‘Fire and Ice’, opening two lines; later collected in New Hampshire (1923). Spoken by the poem’s lyric speaker. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/some-say-the-world-will-end-in-fire/ (27 October 2026).

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