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A little learning poem analysis
Analysis of poem "nothing gold can stay" by robert frost
Introduction to poetry poem analysis
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In “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Frost makes a bold claim: sin, suffering, and loss are inevitable because the passage of time causes everyone to fall from grace.
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.
Arielle Reyes
Robert Frost's poem epitomizes the deterioration of innocence by using nature to symbolize life and the idea of it fading away. It begins with the purity of a child and ends with the life of innocence being taken away by time.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" appears to be quite a simple poem due to it having only eight lines, yet if you dig a little deeper, then you will realize that those
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"Her early leaf’s a flower," a continuation and transformation of the leaf to a flower.
He used a hyperbole in, "but only so an hour," by giving the season an extremely short lifespan. Which perfectly fits in with the quote, "it will all be over in the blink of an eye." In, "so Eden sank to grief," he is saying how as time passes on by, the leaves fade away due to the seasons changing. He related it to the Garden of Eden (old testament) where they were brought to the ground due to their transgression. Although in this case, it was his way of expressing the reality of how things don't last forever.
"So dawn goes down today," he's saying how it will eventually change whether we want it to or not. The use of the word dawn is a great visualization of the warmth and 'golden' memories of the perfect state. "Nothing gold can stay," is, unfortunately, his way of saying that even the most valuable things cannot last for
Both Frost and Caulfield have the desire for beautiful things to last forever. Holden Caulfield recalls a time when he and Jane were younger, they would be playing checkers, and Jane would refuse to move her kings from the back row. It wasn’t any kind of a strategy, nor was it for any particular reason, besides the reason that Jane just happened to like the way they look back there. “She wouldn’t move any of her kings. What she’d do, when she’d get a king, she wouldn’t move it. She’d just leave it in the back row. She’d get them all lined up in the back row. Then she’d never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were in the back row.” (Salinger, 31-32)Another example is when Holden is watching Phoebe go around and around on the carousel. He sees this moment as a beautiful thing that he wants to preserve. Robert Frost has the same idea when he says “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold”. He’s saying that this first green of nature is so beautiful, but there is no way to hold on to it no matter how much you’d like to.
Adding on to the previous paragraph, Frost in the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” Frost uses an allusion in “So Eden sank to grief So dawn goes down to day Nothing gold can stay”(lines 6-8). This is an allusion because it refers to the story of Adam and Eve in which both are in paradise but are soon thrown out after giving in to temptation. This helps to convey the
In “Spring and Fall” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (391?), the element of poetry that stands out most for me in the poem is connotation. Hopkins gives additional meaning to his words using this method. The author refers to a child crying over the fallen leaves from the trees, referring to her first experience and contact with death. In “Leaves, like the things of man” he compares the leaves with human troubles and although Margaret is still a child “fresh thoughts”, she cares and feel sensitive about it. Then the author says that she will get less thoughtful about these things when she becomes an adult in line 5 “…heart grows older” and line 6 “sights colder.” But finally, the author compares the mortality of the leaves to human mortality “the blight man was born for” and suggests that in reality Margaret is mourning her own death in the last line of the poem, as we are all destined to die one
So Eden sank to grief,” Lines 5-6 this is nor good nor evil but it is neutral as it says that the leaf subsided to a leaf which no change and eden sank to grief which was on her own accord which made it so there was no fluctuation in the poem for weather it was bad or good. Also it doesn't have Young vs old because it says something may stay but when it is young it is already withering away and when it is old it does the same so it does nothing to change the theme of the statement. Although it does have beauty vs ugly where it says that in the span of an hour something can go from pure beauty of radiating gold it can grow older and become a Rusty metal and form a certain ugliness. innocence vs Wise is shown in “Nature's first green is gold” Line 1 “But only so an hour” Line 4 when something is first born it is full of innocence and has done very little to nothing wrong whereas if you give but a moment to live it can all change and become very wise for things like lying or how to deceive the people that have wronged you. This is the fourth and final example of modernism to be shown in this
The author of Mending Wall and Nothing Gold Can Stay uses figurative language like metaphors and personification to demonstrate his overall tone. In Nothing Gold Can Stay, the author stated that “Natures first green is gold” meaning that the budding of a leaf is precious like gold is precious, having great value to people. When Robert Frost stated “Her hardest hue to hold...Her early leaf's a flower,” he was using personification acting as if nature, itself, was an actual person giving birth to a budding flower. He talks about leaves and flowers only lasting for a short time; in fact, only an hour to demonstrate his overall tone that nothing good stays and beauty is not permanent. He talks about the dawn of day also being extremely short
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" also has a personal sense to it, but the author of this poem, Robert Frost, does not try to make the same connection with his readers. Allegory is put to use in this poem with the case of nature. Instead of using personal pronouns to draw the reader into the story as Owen does, Frost uses them to personify nature, always referring to it as "her". The opening lines of the poem say, "Nature's first green is gold / Her hardest hue to hold". This is a common occurrence in writing, especially when dealing with nature. By personifying nature as a woman, rather than just an object, the reader is able to connect more with that character. This is because it is easier for humans to relate to another person than it is for them to relate to an object, even if only on paper.
The title of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" implies multiple possibilites. Most people thought of this poem as growing older, but Frost's reasoning for the poem was that he thought the world was ending.
In his poem "Nothing Gold can Stay", Robert Frost names youth and its attributes as invaluable. Using nature as an example, Frost relates the earliest green of a newborn plant to gold; its first leaves are equated with flowers. However, to hold something as fleeting as youth in the highest of esteems is to set one's self up for tragedy. The laws of the Universe cast the glories of youth into an unquestionable state of impermanence. It is an inescapable fact that all that is born, pure and clean, will be polluted with age and die. The aging process that Frost describes is meant to be taken literally as well as metaphorically. Literally, the plants that Frost describes are an example of this nonexclusive law of aging. This prooving through common natural phenomenom the tangible and scientific merit of the poem. There is also a spiritual understanding. Frost uses a religious allusion to further enforce the objective of the poem.Whether Frost's argument is proven in a religious or scientific forum, it is nonetheless true. In directly citing these natural occurrences from inanimate, organic things such as plants, he also indirectly addresses the phenomena of aging in humans, in both physical and spiritual respects.
Frost was known for writing poetry with an emphasis on nature. He used the changing of the seasons to symbolize events that were also occurring in the lives of the characters portrayed in his poems as well as to give a vivid depiction of the human condition. For instance, in “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, Frost opens the poem with a line about the shade of the leaves, but by the end of the poem it becomes evident that the gold in which he is describing has little to do with nature, but rather is a depiction of things valued in life and the frailty there of. Mordecai Marcus stated in his book The Poems of Robert Frost: an explication, “Frost's view resembles Emerson's idea that being born into this world is the fall implying that the suffering and decay brought by natural processes are what we know of evil… The "Nothing" of the last line, repeated from the title, receives special emphasis; the gold that cannot stay comes to represent all perfections” (Marcus) Using nature as a means to symbolize the cycle of human existence was a common thread in a large number of Frost’s poems.
The poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” means that nothing good can stay, in other words, you won’t always have that goodness and innocence within you. The poem begins when you are first born, which is when you are gold, innocent and pure of heart, but as you mature you commence to make dreadful decisions. As you continue making bad decisions your gold begins to dwindle because you are no longer pure of heart, for you have now committed several sins. These sins include being rude and disrespectful, having envy of others and much more dreadful decisions one may take. Essentially being the meaning of the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay”.
Frost brings this concept of temporary happiness and beauty to life in this quote, “Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour” (line 3-4). The image of a flower dying shortly after its bloom unites with the story of Allie and his unfortunate death. Allie’s time with Holden was limited, but it was part of the natural process that exists in everyone's life. The time when Allie was alive was filled with happiness, but when he departed Holden was faced with a feeling of emptiness. The allusion “Eden sank to grief” also implies a similar message. Eden fell to sadness when sin entered the world just as when Allie died, Holden entered into a time of deep despair. These quotes show reminders of how time passes and how people must continue our lives dealing with
The poem states that everything eventually comes to an end and that not even gold can remain unchanged. The poem explains this theme with many metaphors about everything that’s coming to an end. Freeman explains that “Even the poem's rhymes contribute to this sense of inevitability: Nature's gold we (or She) cannot hold; the flower lasts only an hour; the post flower leaf is like Eden's grief; the coming of day means that dawn's gold cannot stay”(2). The poem explains that everything has a natural cycle and that nothing lasts forever. When the poem states “nothing can stay gold”, Frost looks back at the flower and the time of day and implies that it all comes to an end.
In the first quatrain of the poem the speaker compares himself to autumn. The speaker says, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” (1). He is seeing himself as the fall season of the year. A time of the year when nights arrive quicker and the temperature becomes cooler. When relating this season to life, it is when a person is experiencing stages of decline in their life making them closer to death. He creates an image of a tree, with leaves that have been falling with the change of season into winter. “When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang.” (2) When using the image of leaves falling from a tree and leaving it bare,
Gold is one of the most popular metals as investment. Because of its high and consistent value, it is considered one of the safest commodities to invest in. There are several ways of using gold as an investment. Gold can be physically bough in the form of bullion bars or bullion coins. Gold exchange products can be traded in major stock exchanges in the same manner as shares. These include closed-end products or CEFs, exchange-traded notes or ETNs, and exchange-traded funds or ETFs. Gold accounts can be availed from banks and their management greatly depends on whether it is an unallocated or an allocated gold account. Gold certificates used to circulate as money until the United States restricted private gold ownership in 1933. Buying shares in gold mining companies comes with structural, management, and political risks but investing in the right company at the right time can increase share prices to as much as 20%.
Regarding lines 17-18, the poet correlates the flower wilting near its demise to the beauty of man fading over a lifetime. In regards to the character Everyman, his beauty will deteriorate over his life to eventually nothing –non-existent. Beauty is symbolized as a delicate treasure, and life is the progression of seasons, and the change that occurs between the relationship of beauty and life is