In April of 2003, six months after this blog began, I posted my favorite spring poem. And each year since then I’ve repeated that ritual, noting the annual arrival of spring’s golden-green early buds and leaves. I was apparently too sick last week to notice that spring had sprung, but I’m posting the poem again even though the brief golden moment seems to have passed.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
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.
—Robert Frost
(see also: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006)
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Stop being sick will you already??!
great poem.
Thanks for sharing!
When you get a chance, I'd appreciate your insights on Second Life given your vast experience and expertise in the other online worlds.
I hadn't noticed before, but "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is quite sad, the kind of poem you'd expect from a man who, like Frost, suffered all his life from depression. It's amazing to me how the grouchy "it's nice enough out now but don't expect the good weather to last" feeling is transformed -- by what? -- the images, the rhythm, the art of the poem... and by his leaving us readers enough room to make the interpretations, or modifications, we need.
Interesting take on the poem, Linda. I have always believed that the title referred to the, then, ongoing fracas over the gold standard in currency.
The first version of this poem (there are six) was sent to George R. Elliott in March, 1920, around the same time that the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan were trying to prop up the global gold standard which had collapsed with the onset of WWI.
Even though England did manage to return to the gold standard in 1925, ultimately it converted to a fiat currency by 1931 and the US followed in 1933.
I believe that Frost had a sense of this impending doom for the gold standard, thus, the title of the poem.
Gerald, I love it! Next time I teach a lit and interpretation class, I'll surely refer to this brilliant reading. You are golden.
This poem had a nice role in "The Outsiders" (the book).
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