- Robert Service
I’ve always admired Robert Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice,” but today I’m not so sure. Will the world end in fire or ice, Frost wonders, and he considers it a darned good question. Probably fire, he muses—”from what I’ve tasted of desire.” On the other hand, “I think I know enough of hate / To say that for destruction ice / Is also great / And would suffice.”
I hesitated to write about “The Cremation of Sam McGee” because I assumed every schoolchild knew this turn-of-the-last-century poem pretty much by heart. But it turns out schoolchildren don’t. Neither do most people my age. Maybe I read it as a boy only because I attended a Canadian school, where it was virtually a sacred text. I have to admit that it put dangerous ideas in my head. (1) Poetry is a lot of fun. (2) Poems that rhyme are a lot more fun than poems that don’t.
