In this little literary tour de force, the New England poet Robert Frost manages to encompass, in a mere nine lines, global apocalypse and the individual human’s capacity for destructive personal relationships. The companion pieces show him in lighter mood. I once heard Frost read his poetry when I was a student in the USA. By then a legendary figure on the American literary scene, the old man with his shock of white hair, seemed to fit well with his Orcadian ancestry.  
                

FIRE AND ICE

 

FRAGMENTARY BLUE
Why make so much of fragmentary blue
In here or there a bird, or butterfly,
Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,
When heaven presents in solid sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet) – 
Though some savants make earth include the sky;
And blue so far above us comes so high,
It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

 

DUST OF SNOW
The day a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow 
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart 
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.