Robert Frost - Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost - Nothing Gold Can Stay [+ favourites]

I'm not really into reading poetry, but I heard a lot about Robert Frost's work and wanted to check it out.

I read "Nothing Gold Can Stay". After reading it I went to the site below to find ppl's interpretations of it and found some interesting things that made me appreciate it a lot more.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/gold.htm
Interpretations



Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs 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.

Anyone have some thoughts on the patterns or meanings or author?

Haha, nice. I never thought of it as a symbol of lost innocence but it makes a lot of sense. I was having trouble figuring out these lines in particular:

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,

I figured that Frost intended the latter line to be a product of the one before it, but I read a few interpretations that didn't really concur with that. With gold as innocence, though, it makes a lot of sense.


The patterns that were brought up in the second interpretation (on the site I provided) kind of shocked me.

Here's a quote from John A. Rea's interpretation, "Starting with consonantism, the most striking feature is the alliterative symmetry, based on the stressed syllables"

N G G
H H H
O L F
O S O
L S L
O S G
D D D
N G S

I'd love to be able to realize the significance of these patterns, altho I'm sure I don't.
I'll check out those other two poems, also, thx a lot for the info.

this has a pretty good explanation on the poem http://www.danagioia.net/essays/efrost2.htm