This presentation deals with Comparison: Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ & Edmund Spenser's ‘My Love is Like to Ice and I to Fire’. It was presented in class presentation in M.A. Programme. This presentation compares poems of two different poets, with same metaphors but different symbols.

1. Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.
Paper no.: 108 The American Literature
Comparison: Robert
Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ &
Edmund Spenser's ‘My
Love is Like to Ice and I
to Fire’
Prepared by: Jheel Barad

2. I am Jheel Barad
Roll No.: 12
Enrollment no.: 4069206420210003
Sem.: 2 (M.A.)
Paper no.: 108 Paper code: 22401
Paper name: The American Literature
Topic: Comparison: Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ & Edmund
Spenser's ‘My Love is Like to Ice and I to Fire’
Submitted to: Smt S.B. Gardi, Department of English,
M.K.B.U
E-mail: jheelbarad@gmail.com

3. Robert Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’(Frost)
Published in 1923
Modern Poem/ modernist literature
Short rhyming poem; ABA ABC BCB
Nine lines
Metaphor; fire- desire/ passion ice: hatred
‘Some..’- Universalizing effect
Begins with contradiction
Paradox: ‘...perish twice’
Tone- destructive; Emotions becoming destructive

4. Metaphors:
E.g.: Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’(Shelley)
‘Vyanana’ is found in the poem, we are not using direct meaning of fire and ice
but secondary meaning(INGALLS)
Marveled (astonished) at for its compactness, "Fire and Ice" signaled
for Frost "a new style, tone, manner, [and] form." Its casual tone
masks the serious question it poses to the reader.(John)
Robert a Modern or a traditional poet?
FIRE ICE
Passion/ Desire Hatred
Nuclear destruction Isolation/ Alienation
climate climate

5. Edmund Spenser's ‘My Love is Like to Ice and I to
Fire’.(Spenser)
Published in 1595.
Sonnet- lyric poem; abab bcbc cdcd ee (Baldwin)
Love poem; Metaphysical poem
Science (physics) semantic field- boiling, melt, dissolve, burn,
congealed
Individualism
‘Vyanana’ is found in the poem, we are not using direct meaning of fire and ice
but secondary meaning(INGALLS)

6. 1. Rejected love
● Love changed logical order: fire can't
melt ice and ice doesn't calm fire
● Metaphors: Fire- love passion ice-
coldness in relation/ cold- hearted girl
(“Analysis of Edmund Spenser's sonnets | MARCO POLO”)
● Double metaphor- ice to fire is water
and water to fire(“Analysis of Edmund Spenser's
sonnets | MARCO POLO”)
● The paradoxical nature of fire and ice-
“miraculous” nature
● Rhetorical questions
● “alter all the course of kind.”(Spenser)
2. Delighted Love
Metaphor: Ice- Distance

7. Comparison:
SIMILARITIES
● Fire-passion/ desire
● Personified human emotions
● Use of paradox
● First person narration
● Indian Aesthetics- Vyanjana
subtopic of Dhvani, proposed by
Anandavardhana in
‘Dhvanyaloka’(INGALLS)
CONTRASTS
● Ice- hatred and distance/ cold
heartedness
● Theme: universality (some) and
individuality (I)
● Love poem and destruction
poem
● Modernist and metaphysical poet

8. Work Cited:
“Analysis of Edmund Spenser's sonnets | MARCO POLO.” MARCO POLO, 22 December 2015,
https://marcopologencana.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/my-love-is-like-to-ice-and-i-to-fire-by-edmund-
spenser/. Accessed 13 April 2022.
Baldwin, Emma. "My Love is like to ice, and I to fire by Edmund Spenser". Poem Analysis,
https://poemanalysis.com/edmund-spenser/my-love-is-like-to-ice-and-i-to-fire/. Accessed 11 April 2022.
Frost, Robert. “Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice. Accessed 12 April 2022.
INGALLS, DANIEL H. H. “The Dhvanyaloka of Anandavardhana with the Locana of Abhinavagupta.”
Gianfranco Bertagni, 1990, http://www.gianfrancobertagni.it/materiali/tantra/ingalls.pdf. Accessed 13 April
2022.
John N. Serio (1999) Frost's Fire and Ice and Dante's Inferno, The Explicator, 57:4, 218-221, DOI:
10.1080/00144949909596879

9. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Masterwork Books, 1995.
Spenser, Edmund. “Amoretti XXX: My Love is like to ice, and I to….” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50271/amoretti-xxx-my-love-is-like-to-ice-and-i-to-fire.
Accessed 13 April 2022.
Walker, Andrew. "Fire and Ice by Robert Frost". Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/robert-
frost/fire-and-ice/. Accessed 11 April 2022.