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Analysis Of Robert Lee Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay

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Robert Lee Frost was one of the most well-known poets of his time. Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco to Isabelle Moodie and William Prescott Frost Jr. Robert passed away at the age of 88 on January 29, 1963, in Boston, Massachusetts from prostate surgery. Frost was of American descent and several of his works were written in the Naturalism era, Modernism era, World War II, and the twentieth century. Frost’s love for poetry came mostly from his mother Isabelle, as she “wrote book reviews and poems that were occasionally published in the Post. Although, his passion for poetry was not a glimmer in his consciousness as a child. Frost's love for nature was starting to form, inspired by his mother...her influence on Frost in developing …show more content…

The idea that everything changes in the poem is not used to portray that things undergo alteration in order to become better, but to “convey a feeling of sorrow about the fact that things must change over time”(Poetry for Students 204). Thematically, the poem uses a flower to portray the transformation it undergoes over time to convey how nothing of value will remain. Frost display’s the overall theme of the poem as he “concentrates upon the good things that are lost, rather than the terrible things that give way to a more sensible way of being. From nature for instance, he mentions how a flower yields its beauty to become and home leafy. Frost, however, could just as well have taken the same plant and depicted it as a hard little seed in the dirt giving way to a flower”(Poetry for Students 204). Ultimately, Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, truly illustrates how not every change in the world is for the better but maybe for the …show more content…

Frost portrays the tone as bittersweet through the narrator as he talks about how all beautiful things in the world fade away. Frost begins the poem with a cheerful tone, as he uses the word “gold” in the first line to represent “the brief state of beauty through which the things of the world pass”(Poetry for Students 204). However, the turning point of the poem’s tone begins in line four when the narrator mentions how this beauty only lasts for an hour. The poem continues this negative tone as the narrator talks about the flower transforming, thus losing its beauty. Finally, the poem ends with a disappointed tone as the narrator ends the poem with the title Nothing Gold Can Stay to convey the relationship “between beauty and its own demise… as nothing gold can survive”(Poetry for Students

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