Robert Frost captures a clear and concise truth in his poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”. The analysis of this poem would seem quite easy upon first looking at it. It is a short poem at a mere eight lines. His words are few yet they speak volumes.
We must break down the poem and look at each line as its own entity before we can put it together as a whole:
1. “Nature’s first green is gold”- Upon first reading this line we think of the trees and the grass. After having spent a winter inside our homes and seeing nothing but brown, the first signs of Spring arriving are just the thing we need. Robert Frost captures the feel of seeing nature’s green sprouting from the Earth as gold. Most of us consider gold a precious commodity. Having gold is not only equal to having wealth; it is also a thing of beauty. It is something that we treasure just as fine wine or diamonds. Therefore, Nature’s first green is gold because we treasure it.
2. “Her hardest hue to hold”- Try as we may, we can’t hold onto it forever. We all would like to hold on to what is beautiful and what we treasure. Nature doesn’t allow us to do that. This shows the parallel between nature and our lives. We have many wonderful things coming in and out of our lives. There are many wonderful gifts that we are given. Each one of them we try to store away so that we will always have it. The same thing can be said of our youth. We want to hold onto the beauty of our youth. We never want to let go of a family member or friends. We always want to be able to do the same things that we can do when we are young. We try so hard to hold on to those things.
3. “Her early leaf’s a flower”- Mr. Frost describes the beauty of the flower when the “green” is young. Seeing a flower blooming is something of wonder and excitement. We can watch the flower grow and are in awe of her delicate precious petals as they open into greater and greater beauty.
4. “But only so an hour”- This is the place in the poem that Robert Frost takes a different direction. He lets us know that this beautiful flower that we have just watched bloom will only last a short time. Then the flower will wilt and wither away. How long would we keep this flower alive in its early stages if we had the choice? Forever would be my guess. Yet it slips through our fingers as surely as youth and beauty soon melt away from our faces.
5. “Then the leaf subsides to leaf”- Robert Frost describes here the change that nature has made now. The flower is now certainly withered and it sadly goes away a little at a time. How easy to put this beside our lives and our memories and compare them. They are as one.
6. “So Eden sank to grief”- Frost puts a whole new twist on the poem as he describes the Bible story of Eden. Eden was the perfect place. It was a gift for Adam and Eve from God. The only thing they had to do was to follow simple instructions and they would live there forever. Yet they allowed themselves to fall into sin. Therefore, the beauty of Eden is now lost forever. Its perfection will never live again.
7. So dawn goes down to day”- Frost compares the nature of the green and the flower with the dawn and dusk in this line. He is stating in this line that so every day begins and then it quickly fades into the night. One more day is gone and with it the beauty that lies within it. You can’t get it back so you should enjoy it while you have it.
8. “Nothing gold can stay”- This is the final line in this wonderfully written poem. This is where he states that everything has its end. When we have it, we don’t really appreciate it. It isn’t until it is gone that we long to have it back. The things we treasure today will be long gone tomorrow. Nothing perfect in our lives will stay forever. We will have other perfect moments that will be “gold”, however, they will not stay either.
My final analysis for the poem in its entirety is this: Robert Frost is stating clearly that we have gold only for a short time. The golden moments in our lives may remain in our hearts forever but that is the only place. Once a flower has bloomed and wilted away we will never see that flower again. Just as in life, once our youth has faded, we cannot get it back. When someone we love dies, we don’t get them back. When our hearts bloom with love, it will eventually break. Nothing stays perfect that is perfect.
It was pure genius to tie Eden into the thoughts that this author had on his mind at the time of the writing. He brings into the poem something that was supposed to be and remain perfect forever and shows us how it did fall. It fell because of human nature. I believe that Mr. Frost hit the nail on the head with the poem. Indeed he was correct in stating that “Nothing gold can stay”.
