9/28/2015
Monday, 9/28/15
 Take out your Interactive Notebook and open it to the “Nothing Gold
Can Stay” theme paragraph you wrote the Friday before the break. Today
you will spend 15 minutes revising, editing and rewriting the paragraph.
 This was your writing prompt: What’s the main THEME of Robert
Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”? Support your answer
with evidence from the poem.
Reminders:
 The theme is main message or idea.
 Use the RACER strategy to write your answer.
 Be sure to CITE evidence from the poem to support your answer
and EXPLAIN why your evidence supports your answer.
 Use the whisper phone to read through it at least twice to make
revisions and edits.
 Rewrite your paragraph with the revisions and edits.
 Theme notes…The most beautiful things in life often don’t
last very long. (spring blooms, Garden of Eden, sunrise)
Wonderful things fade away…. Gold is a symbol of youth and
beauty… Poem focuses on the “gold” found in
nature….Human innocence and joy don’t last.
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
The first color we see in Spring doesn’t stick around for very long.
Nature holding on to something is personification. There is also
alliteration in this line. Makes you slow down and really think.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
This is a metaphor. Just like nature’s first green is gold, her first leaf is a
flower. Flowers bloom in the spring. Things turn green in the summer.
Blooms don’t last very long. That’s sad.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
When the leaf is no longer a “flower,” it’s a leaf. “Subsides”
means it sinks down to become another leaf.
This is an allusion to the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. It compares
mankind’s fall from the Garden of Eden to the change from gold to green.
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
This is a little strange. How can the first green be gold?
Makes me think of when the sun rises and makes
everything golder and prettier than normal.
Golden hues of sunrise – beautiful! – turn in to heat of the day.
***The most beautiful things in life often don’t last very long. (spring
blooms, Garden of Eden, sunrise)… Wonderful things fade away.
***Gold is a symbol of youth and beauty… Poem focuses on the “gold” found
in nature.
***Speaker uses imagery of nature to show readers his thoughts about
human life in general…. Human innocence and joy don’t last.
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