Nothing Gold Can Stay

8 lines

Robert Frost·1874–1963

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Summary Meaning

Robert Frost's 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' meditates on the ephemeral nature of perfection and innocence through the metaphor of spring's first leaves, which symbolize a fleeting golden age. The poem's paradoxical compression—eight lines of iambic trimeter—mirrors its theme of transience, as each enjambment and internal rhyme accelerates the loss. Philosophically, it engages with Heraclitean flux and Edenic fall, suggesting that impermanence is an ontological condition rather than a mere accident. Its tone balances wistful resignation with stoic clarity, achieving a lyrical precision that transforms a natural observation into a universal elegy for lost purity.

ature'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.

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