Poem Analysis....

Hey Everyone.....i am a new member and wanted some help and opinions....

Nothing Gold Can Stay (1923)
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.

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Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (1923)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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Above are the two poems by a famous poet, 'Robert Frost'.....i just want people to take a moment and read these two poems and tell me the symbolic meaning of each, what part of the poem made you fell something and the comparison between the two...


please i would appreciate it if you share your ideas....

Thanks..

Hello, daniyalansari, welcome to the forum.
Unfortunately, at the moment, I have very little time on the computer, far too little to dissect Frost's poetry, but hopefully I can return later today and edit this message with a thorough response. I just wanted to type this message in case you rarely return to check this thread. :)

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Originally Posted by daniyalansari

Hey Everyone.....i am a new member and wanted some help and opinions...

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"Snowy Evening" is one of my all-time favorite poems and it has an hypnotic effect on me every time I read it.

But I don't think it has a "symbolic" meaning. It is what it is -- a pastoral description combined with philosophical reflections.

And I don't think anyone can learn to write or appreciate poetry by over-analyzing good examples and searching for symbolism. Any more than you could learn to paint by analyzing the chemical make-up of the oils used in a Picasso painting.

All forms of art transcend logic and rationality. They can only be appreciated on an emotional level, which is where they originated.

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Originally Posted by mono

Hello, daniyalansari, welcome to the forum.
Unfortunately, at the moment, I have very little time on the computer, far too little to dissect Frost's poetry, but hopefully I can return later today and edit this message with a thorough response. I just wanted to type this message in case you rarely return to check this thread. :)

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i can wait.....and i will be waiting for your reply..

Without getting too detailed, both poems in some way are about time and beauty and death. "Miles to go before I sleep" the first time can be taken literally, but Frost repeats it. Repetition in such a short poem is very poignant. The second time he's talking about his ultimate sleep. In college I was once told that the lake is an allusion to the lake in Dante's hell. I've never been completely sold on that but it is a thought; hell doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the poem to me. But there is an Eden in "Nothing Gold Can Stay" and there is a fall from paradise which Frost connects to death and time. Hope that helps. Thanks for letting me reread two very nice poems.

In my haste I didn't even notice the title of the first poem or read it. I thought S. E. Hinton captured the meaning of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" very well in her book "The Outsiders."

I have not studied this poem before or read the book, but at first glance I think the poem represents the changes that can occur.The light is awakening, only to be condemned to sink below.Now death dawns instead.It alludes to the garden of Eden and the fall of Adam and Eve.They ultimately fell, and subsequently death was brought into the world and all of man's miseries.The irradiating light of paradise and pristine innocence was lost, and unspoiled happiness faded away.Like youth and early life, idealism may dissolve and one may be innocent no more.The golden sun is like awakening adolescence and a blooming flower of nature, which may last only so long.The petals are wilting just as the sunlight is plunging into darkness.As death and decay draw near it affirms the statement that "nothing gold can stay," thus the brightness of innocence and youthfulness, like a fresh bloom, is doomed to be destroyed and tainted as were Adam and Eve in the mythological garden of paradise.It connects light, youth, life, myth, transformations, time, decay, death, and darkness.There is a kind of stuggle, "the grief" at work, as the poem concludes.

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Originally Posted by daniyalansari

Hey Everyone.....i am a new member and wanted some help and opinions....

[Thanks..

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hi
well i afree what has been said earlier ...well seriously i dont find any symbolism in this poem ...i mean it has nothing to do with symbolism it can be taken very literally ...
Woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Here the sleep is refering to Death ...the woods are lovely but he cant stay there forever ...and before dying he needs to complete his commitments ...dats all

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Originally Posted by Dry_Snail

well seriously i dont find any symbolism in this poem ...i mean it has nothing to do with symbolism it can be taken very literally ...
Woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Here the sleep is refering to Death ...the woods are lovely but he cant stay there forever ...and before dying he needs to complete his commitments ...dats all

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You found no symbolism? How about sleep=death?

I say death schmeth. He stops to take a gander at the woods. He promised his wife he would be home by ten at night. He has to move on so he can get some sleep before the rooster crows. That's no symbolism.

Carpe Diem. That's what "Stopping by the woods..." means to me. A domesticated horse is a creature of habit. He knows that stopping on this trail is not what usually happens. That's how many people work in life. They are creatures of habit and never rest to take in the beauty of the world because they are in such a hurry. Whil ehe knows that he has things to do and places to be, he still takes a moment to stop and watch the snow. There's no real right or wrong answer to symbolism in poetry. That's just what I get from it. I agree with Starrwriter on the analysis bit. I studied writing and how to do it and how to pick it apart for 5 years...it has hurt me more than helped me as a writer. It is hard to write things that are what they are when analysis gets in the way.

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Originally Posted by LinFreakinRules

I studied writing and how to do it and how to pick it apart for 5 years...it has hurt me more than helped me as a writer. It is hard to write things that are what they are when analysis gets in the way.

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Exactly! There are writers and literary analysts and they are two different species. I believe creative writing (and all art) is largely a subconscious process. Dredging up symbolism and overlaying a moral to the story at a conscious level is counter-productive.

The creative process is not rational or logical. It makes use of dreams, delusions, hallucinations, epiphanies, imagery from the collective unconscious, etc. to fashion a work of art that is larger than life. Analysis slices and dices everything into small pieces to digest more easily. But the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts and this fact is lost in analysis.

i think decoding a piece of art is killing that art ...i mean its all about perception and if you have those experiences or if you can relate to those experiences then you can understand that art ...but again understand will be an unapprpriate verb here ...i will say you can comunicate with the poem and the poet or the art and the artist ...
while reading Neruda,Lorca or Rilke you cant freeze upon some symbols and their adhered meanings ....there might not be symbols at all sometimes ....it might be just portraying of some absurd thoughts and you really dont need to decode or analyse them ...you need to feel them ....
For Example:

Palm

Palm of the hand. Sole, that no longer walks
but on feeling. That holds itself upward
and in its mirror
receives heavenly roads, that themselves
have journeyed far.
That has learned to walk on water
when it scoops,
that walks upon springs,
transformer of all ways.
That steps into other hands,
turning into landscape
those that are its double:
wanders and arrives in them,
and fills them with arrival.

Rilke
(Muzot, beginning of October, 1924)