Essay On Nothing Gold Can Stay

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Saint Francis of Assis, famous preacher and deacon, once stated, “Men lose all the material things they leave behind them in this world…”. People all over the world rely on materialistic features to push them through challenging times. However, that is not a promising idea because, as Francis of Assis said, material articles expire and will leave people feeling like nothing. Poets such as Jack Frost and John Donne do an excellent job illustrating this in their poems. Poems such as “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Mending Wall” by Jack Frost, and “Death Be Not Proud” by John Donne all provide simple yet profound examples of material entities not enduring. The poems “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, “Death Be Not Proud”, and “Mending Wall” all convey a theme of not holding onto earthly values. To begin with, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” emphasizes not relying on earthly beauty since it will …show more content…

Traditions rarely ever stay the same whether people do not want to partake in them anymore or they realize that the tradition wastes time. In “Mending Wall” it talks about how the wall keeps being damaged and the fact that the people do not need the wall anymore, but one of the neighbors will not demolish it because of tradition. The poem says, “He will not go behind his father’s saying.../He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors” (Mending Wall). Even though the wall is useless and keeps being torn down, the neighbor will not destroy the wall because of his father’s saying. Another example of a useless tradition in the poem occurs when the neighbors keep repairing the wall, even though hunters and animals keep tearing it down (Mending Wall). Both neighbors repeatedly wasted time and energy based on a habit that did not need to happen. People often rely on traditions to decide what to do, however, ideas change, and traditions may no longer be the finest points to hold

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