9th grade, 93%, “almost perfect”
An excerpt from a completely half-assed essay I wrote in 9th grade English class, a poetry explication for Robert Frost’s inimitable “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” I actually wrote the 5-page paper in only a couple of hours, and then went back and futzed it up for the “draft” we had to turn in. Despite the fact that it was billed as a 10 hour project, and I pulled it completely out of my ass with no real editing, I got a 121/130. In my opinion, my attempt to pad the essay by being overly wordy and florid is obvious… but not so to my teacher. As she wrote, “Great ending!” and “Almost perfect!”. And then a few months later I ditched school because I realized what a farce it was.
Alliteration and rhyme play an important part in bringing home the meaning of this particular work of poetry. The tight rhyme scheme (aabbccdd) emphasizes each pair of lines separated by a period and neatly denote the end of a train of thought. each new set of rhymes starts with a slightly different point to make than the one before; instead of going in a straight line, it seems to stop and start again, slightly offset. Alliteration in the phrases “her hardest hue to hold” and “dawn goes down to day” help to bring the poem full circle from near-beginning to near-end by coupling sounds. There is a certain finality about the repetition in these phrases that lets the reader know it is something not to be argued with. If one takes the lines before and after these lines with alliteration, it is easy to see how the alliteration does assist the poem: “Nature’s first green is gold / Nothing gold can stay”—the ‘n’ sounds help form an association between the two lines, and then some. These lines are the real substance of the poem, and the rest is just supporting facts—the poem exists almost entirely as a frame. Without the alliteration, the first and last lines would not feel so similar and would not be emphasized any more than they would normally.
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Meter has an interesting application in this particular poem as in many of Frost’s others—the meter is iambic trimeter, but the stresses are not perfect and not always in the form of iambs. “Nature” and “nothing”—both of which occur in the first and last lines, which is not likely a coincidence—are both trochees, the opposite of iambs, with their first syllable stressed and second slack. This discrepancy causes extra emphasis to be added mentally when reading or speaking these lines and the emphasis comes back (if only vaguely) to make the second instance “feel right” to the reader or listener. Overall, ignoring the two trochees, the rhythm is as tight as the rhyme, and the disjointedness of the first and last lines is smoothed over.
The poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” appears superficially to be a very simple poem, composed in a heartbeat without much thought to anything but perhaps the meter—when examined, it is a carefully wrought work of literature that was composed by a master of rhythm and an expert in judging human reactions to the sound of words. In his typically succinct way, Frost manages to allow for pages of interpretations on a poem that may seem to be about nothing but leaves and seasons—in fact, though, it is about human nature and the intrinsic maxim that all good things come to an end, sometimes before their time. It starts with a simple reference to spring and new leaves, and ends with a reference to Eden and the “fall” of man, encompassing all possible topics in between. The poem is sadly short, but short with a purpose—after all, nothing gold can stay.
