Fire and Ice

Some say the worl 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 say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 1973.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddle and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of love or a season?

Robert Frost, Selected Poems, Penguin Books, 1973.

Robert Frost

As Ian Hamilton explains in his introduction, Robert Frost has been underrated by being over-simplified and over praised. Perceived as a plain-dealing (he was even sent by John F. Kennedy to Russia as an ambassador), kindly, rural man who spent his time mending walls, mowing or apple-picking, he became America's unofficial poet laureate.

(da contracapa de Robert Frost, Selected Poems, Ian Hamilton (ed.), Penguin Books, 1973)