Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nothing Gold Can Stay
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
Such a short poem that says so much. Beauty is fleeting comes to mind first. The gold metaphor - could it mean gold (as in the currency), only gives us temporary and/or false pleasure? Then there's the reference to Eden - the fall from The Garden, "sinking to grief." Could it mean the Western Judeo-Christian view of Adam & Eve being banished from The Garden and the subsequent domination over nature???
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
Such a short poem that says so much. Beauty is fleeting comes to mind first. The gold metaphor - could it mean gold (as in the currency), only gives us temporary and/or false pleasure? Then there's the reference to Eden - the fall from The Garden, "sinking to grief." Could it mean the Western Judeo-Christian view of Adam & Eve being banished from The Garden and the subsequent domination over nature???
Labels: Poetry
posted by Cindy at 2:32 PM
1 Comments:
Cindy, my kindred soul on the other side of this crazy country... this is the first poem I ever memorized. I learned it when I was about 13 years old when I was obsessed with the movie The Outsiders (Ralph Machio's character character recites it while watching a sunset. Don't hold this against me, you can't help when & where a poem plops in your lap, right? :)
This was for sure my "gateway" poem - the first one that opened my eyes to the possibility of poetry.
Anyhow, I love its literal meaning, especially this time of year ... spring, when things are just coming to life - forsythias, daffodils, the leaves of trees yellow before they turn green. The possibilities are what take your breath away in those first moments before life settles in.
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