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There
is a distinctive category of short poem in English that has never
been given a proper name. Usually between five and twelve lines
in length, the form is briefer than a sonnet but more extensive
than an epigram. The form tries for a more ambitious–and usually
less satiric–turn of thought than the epigram, and it does
not so neatly resolve itself in witty closure. The form, however,
also differs from the sonnet because it does not strive for the
complex argument of contrast and resolution so famously found in
the fourteen line paradigm. Instead, this type of short poem usually
tries to describe a single scene or develop a single idea with evocative
finality. These poems also often have an emblematic quality–the
images acquire a symbolic resonance and suggest broader meanings.
Such
evocative short poems are difficult to write. Every line, every
image must meaningfully contribute to the whole. There is no place
for a weak word to hide. The poem must be tightly constructed but
not so rigidly that its effect feels forced or predetermined. The
balance must be perfect. A successful epigram can contentedly proceed
as mere verse–memorably turned metrical language–but this
slightly longer form strives for the fullness of poetry. Small in
size does not limit it to being small in ambition. A number of American
poets have been distinguished masters of this concise but expressive
style–most notably Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound,
Langston Hughes, J. V. Cunningham, Theodore Roethke, X. J. Kennedy,
and Robert Frost.
"Nothing
Gold Can Stay" first appeared in Frost's 1923 volume, New Hampshire,
his first book to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Frost would eventually
garner the prize four times–still the record for any American
poet.) Published when the author was forty-eight, New Hampshire
was a diverse collection of longer narratives and satires mixed
with short lyric poems, including several very brief works. The
most memorable of these short poems were "Nothing Gold Can Stay,"
"Fire and Ice," and "Dust of Snow," now all classic anthology pieces.
All three illustrate Frost's mastery of the short poem, but none
better exemplifies the possibilities of the form than "Nothing Gold
Can Stay."
"Nothing
Gold Can Stay" is remarkably brief. Only eight lines long, it consists
of just forty words. The diction is extremely simple. No word is
longer than two syllables. Most are monosyllabic. The meter is slightly
unusual for Frost–iambic trimeter (a line with three strong
stresses usually spread across six syllables). The poet usually
preferred longer lines like iambic tetrameter (the eight syllable
line of "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening") or pentameter (the
ten syllable line of "Acquainted With the Night" and his other sonnets).
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is, in fact, the only poem in New Hampshire
(out of forty-four pieces) that is written in the short trimeter
line. All of these stylistic features contribute to the poem's expressive
brevity and lyric compression.
The
movement of the poem is both simple and richly evocative. Viewed
as a nature poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" presents the moment in
early spring when the vegetative world is first breaking into blossom.
In the first four lines, Frost's imagery quite literally describes
how new leaves emerge as yellow or golden blossom before they develop
into green leaves. "Her early leaf's a flower," the speaker observes.
This period of blossom, however, is very brief. "But only so an
hour," the speaker then immediately qualifies. If the first three
lines depict a world of rich beauty, the poem pivots decisively
on line four.
The
second half of the poem reveals the consequences of nature's fall
from gold. After a brief hour of golden promise, the poem declares,
"Then leaf subsides to leaf." As always, Frost's exact phrasing
is significant. Notice his unusual repetition of the word leaf
within the same short line. Taken literally, the line suggests that
the leaf was always intended to be only a green leaf, not a golden
flower. If the flower lasted only an hour, the leaf, the poem suggests,
survives for longer. Viewed as a description of the natural world,
this observation appears eminently reasonable. A branch might blossom
for only a week but the resulting leaves last for months. Frost's
poem, however, is now about to move beyond seasonal observations
of Nature.
Suddenly
the poem takes a surprising turn. After seemingly presenting only
the natural world in the first five lines, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
now offers a mythic or theological simile to describe the leaf's
change from gold to green. "So Eden sank to grief," the poem unexpectedly
declares. Until now a reader might assume that the shift from gold
to green was only descriptive and not evaluative, but the use of
grief indicates that the transition is in some sense unfortunate
and perhaps even painful. The poem then shifts focus again from
the mythic to the temporal. "So dawn goes dawn to day" brings the
stated subject back to the natural world, but this time the words
point to the daily cycle of night and day rather than the annual
cycle of the seasons.
"Nothing
Gold Can Stay" explicitly describes identical moments in three temporal
cycles: the daily, the yearly, and the mythic. In each case the
poem depicts the moment when the promise of perfection declines
into something lesser. Gold unabashedly becomes a symbol–a
very traditional one–for the highest value and most radiant
beauty. Spring, dawn, and Eden are each a sort of Golden Age, an
impermanent paradise. What lies ahead is never stated overtly, but
it is inarguably present by implication. Day is inevitably followed
by night. Summer is succeeded by fall and winter. The green leaf
eventually turns brown and decays. The loss of Eden gave Adam and
Eve mortality. Human youth, by implication, is followed by maturity,
old age, and ultimately death. The golden moment, therefore, is
all the more precious because it is transitory. By focusing on a
single moment, Frost evokes an entire day, year, lifetime, and human
history.
If
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" can be satisfactorily interpreted on a natural,
mythic, and theological levels, it can also be read –in general
terms at least–from a biographical perspective. Written by
a middle-aged man who had already lost two children, both parents,
and his closest friend (the British author Edward Thomas who is
commemorated in the poem placed immediately before "Nothing Gold
Can Stay" in New Hampshire), this short work evokes a point
in life when the golden illusions of youth have vanished. The poem
is not explicitly autobiographical. Frost's poem virtually never
are. It reaches for broader resonance than the merely personal.
Yet anyone familiar with Frost's often difficult life can see that
its hard-won wisdom was rooted in bitter experience. How characteristic
of Frost that the personal origins of the poem–whatever they
were–have been so magnificently transcended into a universal
vision of the human condition. What the reader encounters is not
a private complaint about life's injustice but a tender if heartbreaking
expression of the transience of beauty and the grief of mortality.
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