Nothing Gold Can Stay

By Robert Frost

Nothing Gold Can Stay is a good, quality poem for the public because it illustrates many diverse poetic devices and its short length would be able to hold the attention of peoples sophomores.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

was written by Robert Frost.

was originally published in Frosts 1923 Volume, New Hampshire.

is one of Frosts many famous poems alongside Fire and Ice and The Road Not Taken.

Rhythm

the rhythm of this poem is mostly iambic trimeter.

Natures first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leafs a flower; But only so an hour.

Rhyme Scheme

The rhyme scheme in this poem is AABBCCDD; its lines form four pairs of couplets.

Natures first green is gold, A Her hardest hue to hold. A Her early leafs a flower; B But only so and hour. B

Sound Device: Alliteration

Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leafs a flower;

So dawn goes down to day.

In lines two, three and seven the author utilizes alliteration.

Sound Device: Assonance

Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief,

In lines five and six, Frost employs assonance in the form of the long e sound.

Figurative Language: Allusion

So Eden sank to grief,

In the sixth line, Frost is alluding to The Garden of Eden, a setting of a biblical story.

Figurative Language: Personification

Natures first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold.

In these lines of the poem, nature, a non-human thing, is said to be holding the color gold.

Figurative Language: Metaphor

An example of a metaphor in this poem is: Her early leafs a flower;

Here, Frost is comparing two alike things: the leaf and the flower.

Poetic Device: Imagery

So dawn goes down to day.

Natures first green is gold,

Frost is appealing to the readers sense of sight.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

would be a perfect poem for this textbook because of its consistent rhythm and rhyme, ideal length, and numerous examples of poetic devices such as:

Alliteration Assonance Allusion Personification Metaphor Imagery