Winston Tang
Professor Murphy
English 2
28 October 2008
Food For Thought
Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a poem about the beauty of life’s wonderful but short-lived treasures, such as spending time with loved ones and chasing dreams. Frost illustrates those treasures in life through the use of metaphors, diction, imagery, and allusion.”Nothing Gold Can Stay”, helps open one’s eyes to the harsh realities of nature’s path and although we must all succumb to the laws of nature, it is these unbreakable laws that make life so treasured.
Frost uses the growth of leaves as a metaphor to the journey of life. In line 1, “Nature’s first green is gold” (1) the green represents the living, while gold emphasizes its splendor of life. In most cultures, gold is extremely rare element that is very valuable. What Frost is implying in line 1, is that nature’s first creation of life, like a newborn baby, is remarkable because they are innocent, unspoiled and free of any imperfections. However, “Her early leaf’s a flower, but only so an hour” (4) Frost uses imagery to explain that although childhood is a golden and cheerful period, it ends abruptly. “But only so an hour.” (4) Frost uses hour as a hyperbole, to exaggerate the short period of time in which childhood lasts. Hyperboles are most commonly used to exaggerate situations or objects to a greater extent than they are in reality. However, Robert Frost used it in the opposite way to exaggerate and perhaps emphasize how short life is. In line five, “Then leaf subsides to leaf” (5) Frost reveals a depressing fact of reality, that our lives aren’t meant to live in the euphoria of childhood, but to mature into the mundane, working adult world.
In this poem, Robert Frost uses the sun and the positions of the sun throughout the day as metaphor to the cycle of life. Line one evokes the feeling of seeing the first flower blooming after a long and harsh winter. The first...