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.

The paradoxical metaphor in the beginning really gets the audiences' attention and leads them to reading more of the poem.

Saying that green is the hardest color to hold is increasing the worth on it. But then the author contrasts the imagery

by telling us the though the leaves make flowers (a beautiful image of life) it only last an hour (the mournful image of death.)

He continues with this line of thinking using Aristotelian inductive logic (using many examples to prove a larger point)

that everything which is great cannot stay great; nothing gold can stay.

Ya I made this one a bit over complicated