Nothing Gold Can Stay?

Nothing Gold Can Stay

-Robert Frost

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. 

Today, I went snowshoeing for the first time, at sunset.  Upon turning for home, I paused to watch the evening light, as it played on the crystalline surface of the untouched blanket of snow. For just a moment, the world blushed; before the sun slipped below the horizon, it turned a deep red, the color of fresh juice from a blood orange.  I blinked, and the color had disappeared; the sun was blocked by a cloud, and then, finally, it set.  I was surrounded once again by unadulterated white expanses.  In this moment, I was reminded of Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay;” like the golden green of newly emerged leaves in the springtime, the illumination of a snow-covered field lasted for seemingly too short a time. 

Despite having been written by a male, this poem inspired me to respond to its fundamental assertion that the most precious and beautiful things in life cannot last.  In a very physical sense, Frost is correct; the golden glow of the world in spring gives way shortly thereafter to the literally darker, more dull green leaves and tones of summer.  He addresses this using paradoxical language; when Frost states that “green is gold” and that the “leaf’s a flower,” he could be arguing that this fleeting perception is not the true nature of these phenomena.  It is true, of course, that while I was snowshoeing, the snow was not really red.

I would argue, however, that it is the fleeting nature of these most precious and beautiful moments that makes them worthy of note.  The first colors in spring, the first light at dawn, the most hopeful moments in life may not be what they seem, and they may not last, but held in memory, the longevity of their influence on the human spirit cannot be discounted.