Symbolic Landscape in Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
Author(s): M. Bernetta Quinn
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 55, No. 5 (May, 1966), pp. 621-624
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
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Poetry in the Classroom
CONDUCTED BY THE NCTE COMMITTEE ON THE READING AND STUDY OF
POETRY IN HIGH SCHOOL: Dorothy Petitt, chairman;John A. Myers, associatechairman;
Roger Hyndman, consultant; Sister M. Bernetta; Mary Frances Claggett; Alice Coleman; Janet
Emig; Roderick A. Jacobs; Virginia E. Jorgensen; D. J. Lepore; Sister Mary Hester; Sister
Mary Noel; Lois T. Miller; Frank Ross, ex officio.
Symbolic Landscape in Frost's
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"
SisterM. BernettaQuinn,O.S.F.
Department of English
The College of Saint Teresa
Winona, Minnesota
Nothing Gold Can Stay'
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 clown to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost
The interest-advantage of Robert Frost's appearance on John Kennedy's Inauguration
Day, in a role like that of England's poet laureate or the court poet of medieval times,
can well be capitalized on in presenting this writer. Frost's prestige as a result of that
well-publicized ceremony can, shall we say, help the teacher "get a foot inside the door."
Then, after a teacher-given explanation of the term symbol, a discussion could begin
through student-offered examples of symbols taken from life itself, poetry in general,
or a group of Frost poems assigned the day before. It could go on to focus on how both
interior and exterior landscapes are used symbolically in "Nothing Gold Can Stay."
1From Complete Poems of Robert Frost. Copyright 1923, by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
Inc. Copyright renewed 1951,by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, Inc. and Laurence Pollinger, Ltd.
621
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622
ENGLISH
JOURNAL
The New England that Frost loved is the area north of Boston. His regard for it is
tempered with reservations, though clearly he loved it as much for its "diminishments,"
both in terrain and inhabitants, as for its beauties. He looked toward it as people regard
the limitations of their friends, with affectionate tolerance. New England is no lush
Arcadia, though in contrast to the mechanization of cities, Frost's pastoral view tends to
make of it a symbol of the Golden Age. His artistic approach is one of synecdoche:
certain objects (a brook, for example, or a bird, stones, the wind, a white church, apple
trees) are chosen and then used again and again to form a microcosm, a world in
miniature, each rendering of which might be called a "sweet especial rural scene."
From this center radiate lines of emotion to many different levels of existence on this
planet. An intensive study of the symbolic landscape pictured in "Nothing Gold Can
Stay," plus the inescapable delight which will come even subconsciously from its subtle
music, will reveal to the class the meaning behind a remark of its author: "All an artist
needs is samples."
At first examination, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" appears to be merely another poem
about transience, upon which, it has been said, over half the lyrics in the world have
been written. "Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings," Sidney told the Renaissance.
Yet Frost's poem is not one of sadness but of triumph, even in an earthly context.
Warren Beck admirably expresses this triumph: "But the golden has its hour in spring,
its age in legend, its moments in the morning sky; and it has its pure reflection in a poem
like this, because of the poet's receptiveness and fidelity to his experience and his true
originality in working it."2
Understanding how the few symbols in the poem operate will result in understanding
how Frost's poem differs. Perhaps no term occurs so often in modern criticism as symbol.
The word itself means "to bring into conjunction," derived from joining the Greek
prefix syn, "together," with ballein, "to throw." What is thrown together, basically, is
the symbol itself and those (never just one) secondary things, persons, or qualities to
which it directs attention. Beginning with a general statement first and then using an
inductive approach, the teacher of poetry can reveal to high school students, or rather
help them to discover, how symbols enrich the theme in this specific lyric. Besides an
appreciation of the Frost poem, significances will emerge from "Nothing Gold Can
Stay" which alert students will recognize as related to the most casual as well as the
most vital events of life. They will begin to see how not only the novel, to which
Henry James first attributed this function, but all literature has no reason for being other
than to represent life.
What makes a symbol a symbol is that it really is, primarily, what it
literally is, or at
least a part of it. Multiple meaning, the assertion some critics use to define the
symbol, is
perhaps too vague a reference to be grasped by the adolescent, at least until after correlation of the Frost lyric with artists in paint who work in the same tradition. Moreover,
symbol never permits a one-to-one relationship; there must always remain a degree of
mystery, as in all human encounter. Inadequate handling of symbols in poetry, especially
in upper-division classes, may well be a partial cause for the rejection of
poetry too
often consequent upon classroom analysis of
deceptively simple great lyrics.
The symbolic contrasts in "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
might be summarized as gold,
early leaf, flower, Eden, dawn, and gold; as against green, leaf, day. These do not exhaust the possibilities: others, such as hour and hardest hue can be used. The
progress of
the human race from Adam and Eve on, the cycle of the
year, the divisions of the 24hour day, the life of the poet are all given simultaneously, even as are the fourfold meanings of the typology Dante employs in the Divine Comedy. The very fact that man,
unlike the dawn or the budding tree, can realize his transience is a sign of mastery
which is at the very root of all of Frost's meditations on humanity as opposed to Nature.
Indeed, it is this dichotomy which sets him apart from such a Nature poet as
Wordsworth.
2"Poetry's Chronic Disease," The English Journal, 33 (September 1944) 363.
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POETRY
IN THE CLASSROOM
623
The honeymoon can't last forever, this poem seems to say; gold, with its "hardest hue
to hold," which from the short-range view is the most lasting of objects, is really as
ephemeral as foam; it is also the lowest on the scale of being in its rank as mineral, just
as perfect love occupies the highest rank. Yet after the honeymoon comes something
deeper if less thrilling than the first ecstasy, just as after spring, summer. Perhaps it
would be pushing Christian implications too far to extend "So Eden sank to grief" to
another way of stating the felix culpa, but on the other hand Frost has never been
unmindful of the value of suffering and has often involved allusions to the Fall of Man in
his poetry.
Frost's method in "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is that of the landscape artist, who does
not merely "photograph" but recreates a design in paint, a design which even though
it looks "realistic" to the naive eye is the product of rigid selectivity. The presence of
several layers of imagery brings to this New England scene the multiple image which
is the characteristic note of modern painting. According to Grosser, "The multiple
image is the prime necessity of any Modern or contemporary picture. Its presence in
any picture immediately renders that picture acceptable to contemporary taste."3 Even
abstract pictures today sometimes secure a double image through the titles attached to
them, as well as through the varying images and feelings they evoke in the beholder.
However, as in "Nothing Gold Can Stay," a more fecund source of multiple image
than title vs. poem is the juxtaposition of the inner and outer world. Although it is
true that exterior landscapes suffice for Robert Frost's materials -unlike Poe, who created
his own landscapes-interior lkndscape deepens the exterior in his poems, since the
landscape within his head is independent of space and time. Current painters also seize
upon this difference between mind and matter for their effects. On this Grosser says,
"It is this interplay which provides the painter with the particular double
image of
which I speak, the difference between the interior, personal world which is of the
past
and that mysterious land still outside the mind, which is the present." All that life has
meant to Frost is present somehow in his interior landscapes. What he chooses to select
and/or leave out constitutes his exterior scenes. Both are rooted in emotion, as is all art.
Few topflight painters of today offer New England
landscapes resembling those of
Frost. Andrew Wyeth is not very far removed from him. Perhaps Edward
Hopper
comes nearest, in his use of landscape to metamorphose into the concrete an emotional
state, such as loneliness: the hidden meaning of his empty streets and uninhabited rural
settings. "Of much the same temperament as Frost, Hopper dedicates himself to his
calling with the same deliberate and austere intensity."4 As visual aids, colored prints
of Hopper are easy to secure, and his canvases are included in every major museum. The
best single source on him is Lloyd Goodrich's inexpensive, colorfully illustrated, extensively documented Edward Hopper (Whitney Museum of American Art, 22 East
54th Street, New York, 1964). Both Hopper and Frost pay tribute, by
calling attention
to man through his very absence, to the importance of the human consciousness within a
landscape.
Actually, there are many Robert Frosts, and good teaching will not remain content
with the public image, or with any one image. At the same time, it will be conscious
that the maturity of most secondary-school students would not warrant a
penetration
into the darker aspects of Frost's genius. This darker side is scarcely if at all evident in
"Nothing Gold Can Stay," one of his best poems. However, a contrary view might
conceivably be advanced and lend tension to the discussion. Perhaps the progress of life
to death, of beauty to loss of beauty, are primary rather than as stressed here, the
replacement of one value by another. Some advanced groups, towards the end of the
discussion, might find real challenge in defending this approach over the affirmative,
cyclic one.
The
Painter's Eye. New York: New American
3Maurice Grosser,
Library, 1955, p. 168.
4Alexander Eliot, Three Hundred Years of American Painting. New York: New York
Times, Inc., 1957, p. 293.
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624
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JOURNAL
After assimilation of this perfectly balanced poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay," a
sample of the "country north of Boston" will forever be part of the interior landscape
of each student. Without committing Frost to any theology, some may interpret its
relevance to life as a variation of an old proverb: "God gives, and God takes away." If
God takes away, He gives something else in recompense: for spring, summer; for innocence, experience; for sunrise, full noon. The last line of this lyric cost the poet several
years of thought. Its ambiguities are worth his patience.
Setting and/or Statement
D. J. Lepore
Departmentof English
EnfieldJuniorHighSchool
Thompsonville,Connecticut
Two weeks before Thanksgiving I used "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
as a starting point to the formal reading and study of poetry. I selected Frost's popular
poem chiefly because it has a certain amount of clarity and perfection for the eighthgrade pupil. As John Holmes put it ". . . It can be thought of as a picture" and "as a
statement of man's responsibility to man."' In short, the structural perfection and contextual richness of the poem forced me to share its enjoyment and involvement with my
two "honors" and two "general" (heterogeneous) groups.
The actual teaching of "Stopping by Woods . .."had been preceded by a conditioning
period. As early as the second week in September, my classes were exposed to various
types of poetry by teacher-pupil readings and record albums. At a later date I have
them read and listen to other poetry gathered from anthologies or the literature units. In
the beginning we do not analyze a poem. Seeking no explanation or analysis, I allow a
poem to make whatever impression possible. Naturally, a variation of positive and negative results will be produced. But the point here is to expose all the students in the
hope
of gaining some ground in the climb to the plateau of poetry. The appreciation and
explication of poetry actually begins in the early weeks of October. This appreciation
is brought about by an assignment of one to three questions that embody the strengthening of the concepts of imagery, simile, and metaphor (symbol included with "honors"
groups). The aim of the assignment is a gradual, facile comprehension on the part of a
good number of the pupils.
Two weeks before the presentation of the Frost poem, my pupils were introduced to
Ogden Nash, particularly "Spring Song," "Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except
Richer," and "I Do, I Will, I Have." Ogden Nash's poems were used because students
enjoy humor and wit. When the time came to teach "Stopping by Woods .. . ," I felt
that my classes had been won over to poetry and, moreover, were ready for the formal
teaching of poetry.
1John Holmes, "On Frost's 'Stopping by Woods ..
,' " in R. W. Stallman and R. E. Watters,
editors, The Creative Reader, 2d ed. (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1962), p. 893.
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