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Robert Frost · 1923
Nothing Gold Can Stay
The full text of Robert Frost’s poem, what it means in plain words, and its best lines as pictures you can download and share.
- Poet
- Robert Frost
- Published
- 1923
- First line
- Nature’s first green is gold
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
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.
Best lines
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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Meaning and summary
In early spring, the first buds of many trees look gold rather than green, but that colour lasts only a short time before the leaf turns ordinary green. From this small observation Frost moves to larger losses: Eden falling into grief, dawn fading into ordinary day.
The poem says that the most precious things, youth, innocence, first beauty, are also the briefest. In eight short lines it holds a whole philosophy of time.
Form
Eight lines of rhyming couplets in short three-beat lines.
About the poet
Robert Frost (1874–1963) published it in New Hampshire (1923), the book that brought him his first Pulitzer Prize. It is famous from S. E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders.
Poems
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Questions
About the poem
What does Nothing Gold Can Stay mean?
That the most beautiful, precious things, like youth and innocence, never last.
Why is the first green called gold?
Many young buds in spring have a golden colour before they turn green.
Which novel quotes Nothing Gold Can Stay?
The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton.