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Robert Frost: The Poet of New England.
“Stay Gold Pony Boy!”, after reading the novel The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton many years ago I wasn’t able to get those words out of my mind, and found myself many times staying up thinking of what they meant. Finally I read a book my older brother had purchased long ago, it was a collection of the poems of Robert Frost, as I read the poems I found what has come to be my favorite poem and the missing piece to understanding Hinton’s message within his novel. Even though “nothing gold can stay” is only a poem consisting of eight lines, it perfectly captures the genius of Frost’s mind and his ability to touch open such a complex subject , as life and the evolution of innocence.
In eight lines Robert Frost’s embodies a truth which can be found throughout life both in nature and human behavior all in the following:
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? (Frost and Lathem 222)
In analyzing the poem one must take it apart line by line to truly understand the meaning the poet, in this case Frost, is trying to instill. In the first line of the poem, gold's proper semantic expression is "value", while "Nature's first green" refers to youth, All budding plants and fruits are green, and when somebody is "green" they are considered new. In the second line Her hardest hue to hold", we can see the connection of gold with youth become stronger, as youth is the hardest quality for things born of nature to hold on to. For example in life you will often hear elders tell you things such as “enjoy your age you’ll never repeat it” or “your childhood is the funniest and fastest time so enjoy it while you have it”. "Her early leafs a flower" The early leafs, represents youngness, while a flower, is something...