Poems by Robert Frost

 Thinking Activity

Poems by Robert Frost

      This blog is written in response to the thinking activity assigned by Megha ma'am, department of English, MKBU on the poems of Robert Frost. In this blog I am going to discuss the poem 'Nothing Gold can Stay'. 

Robert Frost :-

         Robert Frost was an American poet. His full name was Robert Lee Frost. He was born on March 26, 1874 in San Francisco, California, U.S and died on January 29, 1963 in Boston, Massachusetts. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. He is Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. 

        Frost is the only poet who received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He became one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution". He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. On July 22, 1961, Frost was named poet laureate of Vermont. His major works are,

• A Boy's Will
• North of Boston
• New Hampshire

His major poems are,

• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• The Road not Taken
• Fire and Ice
• Breaches
• Mending Walls

Nothing Gold can Stay 

            'Nothing Gold Can Stay' is a short poem by Robert Frost, written in 1923 and published in The Yale Review in October of that year. It was later published in the collection New Hampshire in 1923 which earned Frost the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Frost is well-known for using depictions of rural life to explore wider social and philosophical themes. "Nothing Gold Can Stay' was written when Frost was 48. For most of his life, Frost lived in the idyllic New England region of the U.S., and he enjoyed incorporating nature themes and motifs into his writing. He uses the metaphor of spring's ending to examine the transience of youth, beauty, and ultimately life itsi. It contains ten lines. The central idea of the poem is 'immortality'. Nothing can last forever.

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.

Analysis:- 

         The poem ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ begins with a simple statement. It refers to spring when he says 'Nature’s first green’. But immediately he uses the word 'Gold'. It gives a reference to Autumn which faded the beauty of Nature. The soft beauty of spring soon fades to summer and beyond. In the second line 'Her” refers to nature. The “hue” of nature is “green” as described in the first line. The second explains that the green of spring cannot last. In summer it will be dry and thus brown. In autumn, the leaves wither, change colours, and fall to earth. In the other perspective, in winter, life is buried under a sea of white so it is impossible to keep a plant green forever. So in a way it is hard to hold this greenery forever.

      This line of ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’ is both a statement of fact and a metaphor. Obviously, in spring the trees will bud and flower before growing back their leaves. In that, literal, respect, the statement is completely accurate. Metaphorically, the writer says that the earliest leaves are as beautiful as a flower. In other words, spring itself is as lovely as a flower. After that what the poet says in the fourth line becomes more important. 

         "But only so an hour."

      It depicts that in springtime everything in nature blossoms lasts more than a mere hour. Metaphorically, it suggests that the early stage of beauty endures for such a brief and fleeting time that it could seem like it only really lasts for a moment. 

      After admitting that beauty lasts only for a while, the poet says that the blossoms of spring are replaceable. In each and every element nature adheres to a strict pattern. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

       First Plants sprout - bud - grow - wither - die. This is a kind of a cycle. Each part of the cycle brings a new aesthetic that is both new and familiar, different, and the same. In the sixth line, the poet recalls the biblical Garden of Eden to further illustrate his point. As nature slowly progresses from spring to winter, so did Eden go from the cradle of humanity to a place in distant memory.

So dawn goes down to day.

        The inevitability of decay is emphasised in the last couplet. Frost says that sunrise is only a temporary, limited time. All things must also be as limited. In the final line, the poet drives home his point. “Gold” is a symbol for all things beautiful, important, and valued. 

Nothing gold can stay.

      Here, the poet brings the word ''Gold" which he has used in the very first line. After observing the first and last line, we can feel the paradox between these two lines. Nature's first green is Gold and the last colour is also gold. He believes that this is true of all things found in nature. Trees, streams, oceans, mountains, and even the sun and stars: nothing is constant. All things change. All things fade to nothing. 

Literary devices:-

     The poem is divided into 4 couplets and 8 lines which means each of the two lines end in the same rhyme scheme - AA, BB, CC, DD. The poem follows an iambic trimester, is a type of meter having three iambs per line. 

Metaphor 

A metaphor is a direct comparison of two things that aren't alike. The first line of the poem compares new life to something extremely valuable:

'Nature's first green is gold'.

Personification:- 

Personification gives human qualities to inanimate objects. In the second line of the poem, nature is viewed as trying to hold on to her colors. 'Her' to s also used to personify nature.

'Her hardest hue to hold,'

The final line of the poem combines both metaphor and personification.

"Nothing gold can stay."

Hyperbole 

Hyperbole is a kind of exaggeration to prove a point. The fourth line in the poem exaggerates how fleeting life stages are with hyperbole, suggesting that a plant only flowers for an hour. Here for an hour is used to describe short earthly life.

'But only so an hour

Allusion:-

Allusion is mentioning something from a historical event or a piece of literature that contains meaning that isn't spelled out for the reader. In this poem Frost uses the allusion of the Biblical Garden of Eden.

'So Eden sank to grief'

Alliteration:

 Alliteration is the repetition of sounds in the same line, such as the sound of /d/ in “So dawn goes down to day”.

Conclusion:-

      In a nutshell, in this poem Frost presents the idea of immortality. Nothing can last forever. The one that has grown or born must decay or die one day and there is no exception. It can be Nature or animal or man all shall come to the end at once. This short poem provides the widest and the biggest truth of the universe which ch is inevitable.

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