16 pages • 32 minutes read
Robert FrostNothing Gold Can Stay
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost (1924)
“Fire and Ice” is another short poem—nine lines—from New Hampshire and like “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” highlights Frost’s use of natural elements (fire, ice) to convey a discussion regarding human emotion (desire, hate).
"Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost (1928)
“Acquainted with the Night” was published in The Virginia Quarterly in 1928 and appeared later in his collection West-Running Brook. It uses imagistic observation to grapple with mortality and the passage of time. Its form is more complex—14 lines of terza rima, an interlocking rhyme—but its melancholy tone is similar to that of “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”
"Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" by William Wordsworth (1807)
This long poem was written by William Wordsworth, the English Romantic poet, in 1804. Frost admired Wordsworth’s poetry about nature and its mutability but takes a bleaker view of the passage of time than Wordsworth does in this poem. Both poems discuss the stages of man and losing the innocence of childhood, but while Wordsworth feels that this loss aligns humans with others in solidarity and hope, Frost is more succinct and more despairing.
Further Literary Sources
Analysis of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost by Dana Gioia (2021)
This is a line-by-line analysis of “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by the well-regarded American poet and former head of the National Endowment of the Arts, Dana Gioia. He covers various thematic interpretations of the poem and discusses Frost’s use of form, meter, and imagery.
Robert Frost: A Life by Jay Parini (2000)
Parini spent nearly 20 years researching Frost’s archives and interviewing those who knew Frost to create this highly accessible account for general readers. Parini’s biography has been lauded as one that paints Frost neither as a hero nor a villain, but a complex human being.
Homage to Robert Frost by Joseph Brodsky, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott. (1997)
Three noteworthy poets, all who won the Nobel Prize for literature, pay tribute to Robert Frost’s work in this collection of essays which examine Frost’s public persona and the craft of his work.
Listen to Poem
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” read by Robert Frost (1951
This is an audio recording, of Robert Frost reading “Nothing Gold Can Stay” at the age of 77. Recorded originally by the The National Council of Teachers of English, it can now be found on Spotify,
Scene with “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” The Outsiders, (1983)
This brief scene is from Francis Ford Coppola’s film version of S. E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders. Here the character of Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) talks with his friend Johnny (Ralph Macchio) about the beauty of nature and recites the poem.
Related Titles
By Robert Frost
