Nothing Gold Can Stay's seeming simplicity and shortness in verse and rhyme leads the reader into a riddle of life and nature. With lines that are easily glossed and yet so cunningly written, it may be easy to pass over the true depth of its meaning.
At its heart, Frost laments. Life is so briefly created and stunningly clear in the short span that it lives in glory but it is too soon to wither. Frost expresses life through nature. Its “gold” is the spring, the bud and the dawn. These things live briefly in comparison to what they begin The flower may grow all summer, but when it first emerges, like the crocus, it is merely a bud that holds all potential for the plant to come. “But only so an hour” it will remain in its state. Just as our childhood cannot be kept forever, neither can this state linger. There is no Neverland for us. Even Eden, the wilds of man’s biblical beginning, synonymous with a haven-state of purity, peacefulness and innocence, eventually fell in order to give rise to the generations that follow.
But, perhaps the most mysterious line in this short solitary stanza is the “dawn goes down to day.” This concept is not immediately clear. In the swift current of the poem, the most literal answer is sought, but how does the dawn fall when it clearly rises and then is no more? But perhaps it is that the dawn dies swiftly as it is followed by the day, falls before it, conceding. Overall, within the context of the poem, this line is rather dark and disturbing. Never once is mentioned the beauty that the day might have but only the dirge of its slaying the dawn. In those short minutes in which it exists it holds more grace than the day, according to Frost. It is the gold of nature. What is the flower to the bud? What is Eden to the future? Perhaps it is the potential of it, that they, the beginnings, posses in that hour the realm of possibilities to come and in that they are precious. For would there be an end without a start? Besides that wondrous beginning, we must be stuck with the second best life has to offer.
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1 comment:
Compelling close-reading, Rebecca.
Plenty rummage-space here for our contingency-universal theme: "Perhaps it is the potential of it, that they, the beginnings, posses in that hour the realm of possibilities to come and in that they are precious. For would there be an end without a start? Besides that wondrous beginning, we must be stuck with the second best life has to offer."
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