Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Poetry is a beautiful medium of expression, and in Robert Frost's hands, it's stunning. The meaning of the above poem has been debated by scholars much more qualified than I, but that's the thing about poetry, like art in general: you see in it what you bring to it. Another Robert (Francis), in a poem named Catch, likens a poem to a baseball ("Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand...High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop, Make him scoop it up...")
No English Major, I (like the boys) am uncoached in Poetry, and that's OK. Here is what I see in this glorious poem.
'Nature's first green' is the swelling bud on the branch, which, when it first unfurls, briefly resembles a flower. But the golden hue now gracing the leaves is a beauty so very transient in the world of plants... Green lasts a long time (palm trees, anyone?) but gold? I think of daffodils, lilies, pears, bees, even dandelions and goldenrod, their existence so brief in the scheme of things. In Autumn, these golden leaves must fall, they cannot sustain themselves any longer. So far, we have seen these things so often that, while spectacular, they are "normal". Then Frost does what he does so well... he morphs a natural occurance into a universal theme: anything glorious is transient. Man's innocence was transient, and it's loss resulted in the loss of the Garden of Eden (and one presumes great grief in the heavens as well as on Earth). A beautiful, brief dawn becomes a plainer day. Nothing gold can stay.
Frost wrote and published this poem in 1923. In 1924, it was again published in a collection - New Hampshire, which included "Fire and Ice" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" - which earned him the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, when that really meant something more than it does today. I would have loved to have gotten that small volume as a gift.
So Autumn has arrived here on the land I inhabit, with all it's attendant beauties. The golds and reds, the rose hips, apples, spicebush berries, the scarlet Virginia Creeper and the red & gold oriental bittersweet berries (the latter plant choking the woods in places such that I am cutting down as much of it as I can every year. If I slack off, soon my trees will disappear as well as their leaves.) The butterflies have gone for the most part, the song birds are migrating through, and I am glad I let the field go to weed, for birds of all kinds eat there all day long.
I need to cherish these beautiful golden days and evenings, because they will not last. I am grateful that the written word remains.
No English Major, I (like the boys) am uncoached in Poetry, and that's OK. Here is what I see in this glorious poem.
'Nature's first green' is the swelling bud on the branch, which, when it first unfurls, briefly resembles a flower. But the golden hue now gracing the leaves is a beauty so very transient in the world of plants... Green lasts a long time (palm trees, anyone?) but gold? I think of daffodils, lilies, pears, bees, even dandelions and goldenrod, their existence so brief in the scheme of things. In Autumn, these golden leaves must fall, they cannot sustain themselves any longer. So far, we have seen these things so often that, while spectacular, they are "normal". Then Frost does what he does so well... he morphs a natural occurance into a universal theme: anything glorious is transient. Man's innocence was transient, and it's loss resulted in the loss of the Garden of Eden (and one presumes great grief in the heavens as well as on Earth). A beautiful, brief dawn becomes a plainer day. Nothing gold can stay.
Frost wrote and published this poem in 1923. In 1924, it was again published in a collection - New Hampshire, which included "Fire and Ice" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" - which earned him the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, when that really meant something more than it does today. I would have loved to have gotten that small volume as a gift.
So Autumn has arrived here on the land I inhabit, with all it's attendant beauties. The golds and reds, the rose hips, apples, spicebush berries, the scarlet Virginia Creeper and the red & gold oriental bittersweet berries (the latter plant choking the woods in places such that I am cutting down as much of it as I can every year. If I slack off, soon my trees will disappear as well as their leaves.) The butterflies have gone for the most part, the song birds are migrating through, and I am glad I let the field go to weed, for birds of all kinds eat there all day long.
I need to cherish these beautiful golden days and evenings, because they will not last. I am grateful that the written word remains.
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