Nothing Gold Can Stay

[Beverly S]

We're reading lots and lots of poetry in my English 1B class. Thought I'd share one of the poems by Robert Frost. Anyone have some insights on this poem?

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.

[Galaxy]

Nothing gold can stay

agood poem for Robert Frost

[babyrey]

This is my favorite poem of all time. I know it by heart, and I reread it constantly. I have to say decifering it was a little hard at first, but once I figured it out, it made the poem, even better. Thank you for posting it.

[AuntShecky]

The first line is indeed scientifically correct; in some species of trees the "true" color of the leaves is gold (or yellow or red, depending on the variety>) Only the addition of chlorophyll during the growing season makes them green.
But as we see so often in Robert Frost's poems, the deceptively simple lines hide (as green leaves hide the real color) important truths. "Nothing gold can stay," nothing
beautiful can last. For example, the beauty of roses proferred by a suitor to his lady love may fade, though the hope is that the love lasts. Expressed much better in Frost's poem -- Eden, that Paradise, couldn't last. Neither does a beautiful day.
The golden leaves of fall, the mythical heaven on earth:
It is their ephemeral nature that makes them beautiful.

[phattissimo]

I find it worth noting, however, that each and every one of the entities listed by Frost as transient--the leaf, the day, the Garden--each one of these is something that has a cyclic nature. Dawns return, seasons return, and from a religious standpoint even the 'fall of man' is redeemed, and thus the paradise returns. Thus the poem is locked in an eternal cycle; it begins and ends wtihin itself and yet there is an eternity within it.

[blazeofglory]

Indeed the poem is rather deceptively moving, and the poet is generally myticaly oriented in most of his poems, and of course he is so deep and profound that we can not fathom what he really experesses without getting lost in his poem.

Of course all he wants to says is everything is fleeting and this is the law of nature that things change.

[Kafka's Crow]

My kids love this poem, thanks to their Baby Eisenstein DVD (Baby Shakespeare). My three years old knows it by heart and recites it with the reader on the DVD. Even my 18 months old daughter tries to recite it in her own language. Absolute beauty. I have never ever thought about its meaning, I have never ever had the chance to go beyond the words, so beautiful is the poetry here that meanings become unimportant. Archibald MacLeish would point at this poem and say, 'A poem should not mean but be' although Frost would strongly disagree as his poem 'must ride its own melting' i-e revelation of meaning.

[NovemberGuest]

I think this poem is amazing :)
Here what it means...or i have always thought it meant

"Gold" here, is a symbol for youth...innocence It only lasts a while...and then its gone.
The line: "So Eden sank to grief." Is an allusion to the biblical garden of eden, where everything was pure...this poem speaks of the "Eden of Childhood"...where we all live until we lose our innocence.
"Her early leafs a flower" represents the beauty of childhood...but, this beauty is not lasting, it is "only so an hour."