Poem of the Day: Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

NOV. 1, 2009

Last Thursday, October 29, you saw at this site a late October scene at a maple-rich, golden Michigan park, photos taken that day. As if to prove Robert Frost’s simple but great title, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” here are some of the same spots in that park today, three days later, after a little wind and rain on Friday. How can these trees know or care that the human calendar says we’ve entered a new phase?

To top it off, I saw Bambi’s ma and pa today, but not long enough to get a photo. They flashed across a path, into some trees, and in seconds went invisible. It also occurred to me that Daddy Bambi, 6-point buck, might want to face off with me, and I didn't want to embarrass him with my latest martial arts moves.

I’ve lived east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason Dixon line most of my life, but it still stuns me every year how fast “dawn goes down to day,” as Frost says. I do see in these shots that November has its pleasures. But on the whole autumn color is a tease; love it, maybe, but never trust it.






Here is Frost’s poem:

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.

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