Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost

(1874-1963)

April in Chicago is almost always a crushing disappointment. March offers a few decent days, but I expect so little of March that I am not surprised by the dreary coldness. Despite decades of experience to the contrary, like a school child I get my hopes up for warm April days, days in the mid-70s. It rarely happens.

I go for the head fakes. White snow drops appear suddenly, like a magician’s rabbit, only to disappear under a late-March dusting. The iridescent crocuses completely throw me off balance; surely such color will be rewarded by warm days. But no. Courageous daffodils make their move like a spouse who wants to resolve a fight by making the first tentative gesture. In the middle of all this I decide to take matters into my own hands. I force a vase of forsythia. I learned this from my wife Geralyn, whose early years in Nebraska were more nature-filled than mine on the South side of Chicago. It works like a charm and the first time I did it I felt like I had discovered a secret. Do other people know this? I wondered. Well, yes, almost everyone. I was the outlier and not in a good direction. Better late than never, though.

So now every year I brave the cold, shears in hand, to select promising branches, place them in the vase, and wait for my reward. But a few branches in the house, good as they are, don’t hold a candle to the real thing. The other bushes are just starting to bud compared to the forsythia. The others show a faint green at best. Mostly it is still winter, and the world is colorless. The contrast between the bland brown and endless gray makes the forsythia’s yellow flowers all the more striking. When the forsythias bloom, there is no half measure. It is brilliant gold and lots of it.

I cannot recall how I encountered Frost’s poem but when I read it, I knew it related to my annual ritual. I knew that it had a place in the calendar, like Easter. As one might expect I don’t give this poem a second thought most of the year and then I see the yellow and it Springs to mind.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold

Her first 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

Obviously, Frost is doing more than celebrating the arrival of spring. Ironically, it is a dark poem.

So Eden sank to grief

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay

The short-lived brilliance of the forsythia is a reminder that nothing stays new forever and that everything is part of the cycle of life. He seems to say that we should enjoy the forsythia, get ready for the tulips and glory in a long-blooming summer garden. But know that all this will fade, including ourselves. Frost joins the Roman poet Horace, who soberly reminded us of our own transience - “Pulvis et umbra sumus” - we are but dust and shadows.

Fair enough. I will grant the poets their point—nothing gold can stay. The forsythia are spectacular and I am not bothered a bit that they are only so for an hour. Similarly, everyone eventually wishes they were young again, but that’s not part of the deal and one needs to get over it. It is mid-September as I write this. The White Sox will not make the playoffs. But there is next year and in the spring the world is new again, if only briefly.