Nothing Gold Can Stay

Robert Frost's poem is short, and at first glance, about a simple phenomenon in nature. The first rays of the sun projected upon the leaves on a crisp morning would shine as pieces of gold, but fades back into plain, mass-produced leaves as soon as the day starts and the magic of the morning disappears. It describes a simple displeasure and melancholy as a perfect world, or "Eden", falls into the ordinary. The ephemeral show of gold in nature is depicted simply and succinctly.

The imagery, however, extends to a greater and much more despondent look upon life, society, and the world at large. The "gold" Frost describes applies to anything of the highest quality, as the king of precious metals since antiquity. The unspoken metaphor between gold and fading thereof shows a process of decay and death of anything of this level of quality, especially in its early stages, a view shared fairly commonly in literature. The nature's first "green" can represent a hot of things: youth, innocence, promise, novelty, or merely the glittery shine of a new object, and the "green" - referenced as "new" in phrases such as "greenhorn", would appear to be "gold" with its newly found brilliance. No matter as an object or concept, the gold metaphor Frost was so fond of in his writing certainly is now commonly understood and widely used.

The melancholy in the writing is overwhelming, almost. In eight simple lines, the usages of verbs are tinged with a longing for the past, the gold of the first green. Phrases like "but only for an hour", "so Eden sank to grief", and even the title-cum-last-line, "nothing gold can stay" are all lines that reek of the sadness of passing. Even words like "subsides" or "hardest to hold" appears to have been carefully chosen to reflect the fact. In contrast, the depiction of the early leaf as a flower is a stark reminder, right next to the gold reference, as a common and visceral way of showing pulchritude. However, the importance of noting that Frost explicitly did not refer to anything that would be interpreted as a culturally accepted "evil" or "bad" in comparison to the gold cannot be understated. The leaves turn to leaves, which might lack any specialness, but doesn't necessarily have any negative connotations to it - one can hardly fault the masses for being abundant. The nature's green merely shows a natural, innate color that is ever-present. The gold is the anomaly. The brilliance of dawn that disappears so quickly is the anomaly.

The fact that Frost did not use any images of death to denote this transition from gold to green shows that the fading gold isn't a representation of some sort of ultimate, literal mortality, but more of a return to form, from a peak down to the ordinary. The poem can be a show of a loss of innocence, something one'd view as precious, found in the first "greens", the children, and as they age, gradually loses until greenery, or ordinariness is all that remains. No blame can be placed on anything but the passing of time, although it is mourned. The title of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" instead of something more explicitly suggesting of a sense of longing such as "Nothing Gold Stays" shows that Frost acknowledged in the poem that despite the deep melancholy that exists in the passing of innocence, it is inevitable and something to be accepted. He had accepted the death of innocence from the beginning, even before the poem began.

Also along the same lines, a loss of the youthful precociousness can be this gold that passes in the poem. Despite the fact that both the precocious curiosity and youthful innocence coexist in most cases, there's a distinct difference between the two losses. The loss of precociousness and the potential to be curious and a transformation to a grey mass of jadedness would be the other side of this tragedy as described by Frost. In a clever turn, both the naïveté of children and the lack of knowledge about worldly matters as well as the curiosity on the world and their unique perspective on the world can both be this "gold" that turns into "green" as the "flowers" turn into "leaf". The Garden of Eden reference would also prompt a reference to "kindergarten", German for "children's garden". The dawn-to-day reference also reminds one of the Riddle of the Sphinx, as the child of dawn on four becomes the adult of day on two.

The poem's simple structure actually beguiles its depth, and the subtle references show the strength of Frost's ability with words when one attempts to read into it. Yet, the mere imagery it imposes on the reader, of morning sun rays and greenery makes it an accessible poem even to the most undiscerning.