On a favorite poem

One of my favorite brief poems is “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost. It was used very effectively in S.E. Hinton’s 20th-century novel The Outsiders about physically violent adolescent men. Francis Ford Coppola made a good movie version of it (I think Coppola has been one of the greatest film directors of all time, even though his mafia movies don’t really appeal to me).

The main character recites the poem while in hiding from police because he had been in a bad brawl. The poem deals with paradox, sentimentality, and nostalgia. Green is gold, Leaf is flower. Gold, which is a strong metal, cannot last.

Here is the poem:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

BY 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.