An extremely compact little lyric, “Fire and Ice” combines humor, fury, detachment, forthrightness, and reserve in an airtight package. Not a syllable is wasted. The aim is aphorism—the slaying of the elusive Truth-beast with one unerring stroke. But for Frost, as usual, the truth remains ambiguous and the question goes unanswered; to settle for aphorism would be to oversimplify. The speaker considers the age-old question of whether the world will end in fire or in ice. This is similar to another age-old question: whether it would be preferable to freeze to death or burn to death. The speaker determines that either option would achieve its purpose sufficiently well.