Nothing Gold Can Stay
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.
Words in this poem
- eden n.
- The garden where Adam and Eve first dwelt; hence, a delightful region or residence. [Heb. eden delight, pleasure; also, a place of pleasure, Eden.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Nothing Gold Can Stay is in the public domain. This text is taken from New Hampshire, A Poem; with Notes and Grace Notes, Project Gutenberg ebook #58611; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay, in New Hampshire (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #58611, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/frost-new-hampshire/nothing-gold-can-stay.html, id L02693.
Form and metre
Nothing Gold Can Stay is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is iambic trimeter, as Wikipedia: Nothing Gold Can Stay (poem) has it. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBCCDD goldA · holdA · flowerB · hourB · leafC · griefC · dayD · stayD
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Nature's first green is gold, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Her hardest hue to hold. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Her early leaf's a flower; | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| But only so an hour. | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| Then leaf subsides to leaf. | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| So Eden sank to grief, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| So dawn goes down to day. | 6 | ······ |
| Nothing gold can stay. | 5 | /˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.