Nature’s first green is gold,
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
The leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay” opens with a phonological emphasis on the fricatives [f] and [s], invoking wispy, mystical imagery in the personification on “Nature,” and in the miraculous phenomenon of sprouting plants. Along with the fricative sensation is a pull toward voiced velar stops in the sound, [g]. This produces imagery of its own as it leads the reader’s mind toward similar sounds of nature such as “growth” and “ground.” It is from such phonological imagery that one can fully behold the powerful, mystical moment in which a bright green sprout breaks through the soft ground of nature’s bed and begins to grow.
The idea of growth moves the reader to the next line, infused again with lightness through the glottal breath, [h]. The air-like sound reminds the reader of the brevity of life, as reflected in the words’ meaning that the youthful “first green” color does not last long. The opening three lines summarize this brief state, and the sounds of lightness and wisps are then replaced in line 4 with the clock-like gongs of the back vowel [o]: “But only so an hour,” reminding the readers of the hand time plays in life, and that all must eventually change, and ultimately die.
The iambic tetrameter of the piece leads to an interesting emphasis in line 5, “The leaf subsides to leaf.” By placing emphasis on the second half of “subsides,” the reader hears a strong “sigh” in the speakers voice, aided by the voiceless fricatives [f] and [s] encompassing it. The following line begins again with a gonging [o] in “So”, as time continues, and the emphasis of stops and nasals evoke a despairing sensation along with the infamous scene as “Eden sank to grief.” Line 7, heavy and coarse with the voiced alveolar stop, [d], represents through sound the “dings” and “dongs” of a clock at midday, as well as the harsh and hitting realization of the the universal truth that nothing can last forever. This leads to the final line, “Nothing gold can stay,” which sums the preceding lines as it contains traces of all the sounds of the poem. It is the melancholic acceptance of this state of nature—that which recognizes the value of earthen treasures, and the brevity of the moments we have to admire them.
16 September 2019
Works Cited:
Frost, Robert. “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 9th Edition, Edited by Robert S. Levine, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2017, pp. 747.