The word "hail" does double duty before the poem has properly started. In the title, "Hail from the chief" can be a salute, the greeting a leader gives or receives. It can just as easily be weather: hailstones thrown down from above. The poem never settles the question, and that doubleness drives everything that follows. The chief is never described or named again, so we cannot tell whether he is the speaker, the target, or only a voice the speaker borrows.
The first line, "a little winter and summer rise within," puts two opposite seasons inside one body. The phrase "a little" sounds modest, almost domestic, but the verb "rise" undercuts that modesty. Something is climbing up and wants out. Hail itself is a product of that meeting, since it forms when cold and heat collide inside a storm cloud. The title and the opening line therefore support each other: the speaker is a small climate in which a salute could turn into a downpour of ice. The line also has no capital, no full stop and no clear subject, so it reads like a thought already underway rather than a statement made for an audience.
The second stanza brings in a human voice: "and me in the business of anger." It is a fragment with no verb, as if the speaker is introducing himself by trade. "Business" is the sharpest word here. It turns a passion into an occupation, something routine and professional, a little comic and a little chilling. Then comes "I might say anything severe." The "might" matters. The threat is held in reserve, and the speaker enjoys the possibility more than any particular insult. "Severe" also carries the weather forward, since it describes judges and storms alike. The sound supports the meaning, because the poem is full of hissing s-sounds: "summer," "business," "say," "severe," "simple," "sing," "peace." They give the language an edge like sleet against glass.
The poem's shape is part of its argument. The stanzas run one line, two lines, then three, so the poem thickens the way a storm gathers. There is no rhyme scheme and no regular meter. The lines vary in length and stress, and the lack of punctuation lets them slide into each other. But the ear catches a quiet echo of sound in the last movement: "anything," "king," "sing," and, a few lines earlier, "within." That short-i, -ing sound pulls the speech toward song, which is exactly where the poem ends up.
The final stanza is built from two similes that pull in opposite directions: "like a simple rogue / like a troubled king." A rogue sits at the bottom of the social ladder and a king at the top, and the speaker claims both. The adjectives are not what we might expect. The rogue is "simple," meaning uncomplicated and unashamed, while the king is "troubled," weighed down by a crown or a conscience. Power seems to make the speaker's anger more tormented, not more secure. Then the last line moves from simile to action: "I sing of the plots against peace." "I sing of" is the traditional opening gesture of epic poetry, the bard clearing his throat before a story of war and rulers. Here the grand formula is shrunk to a few words and aimed at "plots," which can mean conspiracies but also the plots of stories. So the speaker is either the schemer, the singer of schemes, or both. A poet who sings of plots against peace is also, in a sense, making one.
What makes the poem worth reading is how much it holds in six unpunctuated lines. Judging by the imagery, it suggests that private moods and public power are made of the same weather, and that anger, once it becomes a "business," can easily dress itself up as kingship or song. The word "peace" comes last, the only calm word in the poem and the one left under threat. The poem never says whether the chief's greeting is a welcome or a warning, and that uncertainty is its point. We are left in the pause just before the first hailstone lands.