Summary
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" reflects upon the transience of human life and of beauty. The poem is written in rhyming couplets, each line of which comprises six syllables—until the last one, which comprises five. Gold is introduced in the first line in the metaphor, "Nature's first green is gold." The next line, "Her hardest hue to hold," clarifies the first; the green of spring is akin to gold in its preciousness. This second line also introduces the feeling of grasping that continues throughout the poem; Nature, personified here, loses her grip on the color of spring.
The next lines, "Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour," work similarly, first giving us a metaphor then in the next line taking it away. Frost compares the leaves of early spring to flowers, staying within the realm of nature imagery.
The following lines leave that realm, introducing the first and only allusion in this poem: "So Eden sank to grief." Frost then deftly compares Eden with dawn, which also sinks in grief and subsides into day. The last line, "Nothing gold can stay," includes no nature imagery, no allusions, and is plain and straightforward. Nothing in the line itself suggests the speaker's emotions, but its flatness and lack of imagery when compared to the other lines sets it apart, and brings the speaker into focus. Because the speaker is not describing anything external, we sense that he is rather describing an internal state—an emotion or an abstract idea about human life and nature.
Analysis
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is deceptively simple. The rhyme scheme, the nature imagery, and the reference to the Bible may make the poem feel a little stale or even amateurish to the contemporary reader. However, the poem capitalizes on its simplicity, and its muted, almost apathetic mood. The final line, "Nothing gold can stay," is shorter than every other line in the poem, making it feel abrupt and clipped, as if the speaker's grief has cut off his ability to speak. Though the reader may not be counting syllables while reading the poem, the evenness of the first seven lines feels unmistakably broken by the last line.
In this poem, Nature is personified and made female, another move that makes this poem feel rather traditional. However, the possible personification of Eden later in the poem feels less traditional and more innovative. The line "So Eden sank to grief" evokes the image of a person sinking to their knees in supplication; this adds to the undercurrent of desperation in this poem. This line, however, does not fully personify Eden; it could also be sinking like an island subsumed by water. This complex thought, packed into a mere six syllables, magnifies the feeling of loss and potential loss in the poem.
The poem uses tension in its first half to enact the loss that it speaks of. The first line, "Nature's first green is gold," lingers on the beauty of early spring, but the next line, "Her hardest hue to hold," suggests loss. The next two lines are even more explicit: "Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour." While the line "Her hardest hue to hold" only hints at loss, "But only so an hour" makes it concrete.
The next line, "Then leaf subsides to leaf," is the first line in the poem that is its own whole sentence. This plays with the poem's rhythm and the reader's expectations. The first four lines are divided into two sentences, but the final four are divided into three; a one-line sentence followed by a two-line sentence, then another one-line sentence. By making this line its own sentence, Frost introduces a clipped tone; the sentence ends abruptly and perhaps before the reader expects or wants it to—just like the beauty the poem references.
The penultimate line, "So dawn goes down to day," plays with reader expectations as well, but this time through the imagery. Dawn "goes down," a phrase more commonly associated with dusk. This use of juxtaposition imbues the image of dawn with loss; the speaker sees loss in all beauty.
The final line, as the title of the poem, should feel expected and satisfying, and it does; the poem feels like it has come full circle. However, its brevity compared to the other lines, though the difference is only one syllable, makes it feel a little askew, a little unsteady.
Not only that, but the last line also brings the reader closer to the speaker's mind. Each line beforehand includes description; this line, on the other hand, feels like both a fact and an opinion—a conclusion the speaker has come to. The speaker up to this point has been pulling the strings behind the stage; now he emerges, showing that he shares in the grief into which Eden sinks.
