Gold made green

Harry Scherer
MSMU Class of 2022

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.

(3/2022) Forgive me for succumbing to the temptation that my colleagues overcame, but I think the brevity and power of this short Frost poem allow for its words to mark the pages of our town paper.

As the number of days before commencement slowly shrinks below my threshold for comfort, this poem surely articulates my current perception of the past, the present, and the occasionally anxious tension between the two. These days, my conception of time largely rests on two extremes: beginning and end. For that reason, I’ll only focus on how Frost begins this poem and how he ends it.

Frost implies at the outset that nature’s original position can be thought of only within a framework of the present. He does not say that nature’s original color was gold, but that it’s first green is gold. There are two differences here: first in the realm of identity and second in the realm of temporal position. In this line, gold does not fall within the broad category of 'color,' but within the narrower category of a specific color. Frost is taking advantage here of an American East Coast imagination that raises the color green to one’s mind when one hears the word 'nature.' Gold, then, is not just a color abstractly conceived, but a color from the past in relation to a color in the present.

Frost is not Nietzsche, though, and gold is not dead. Instead of relegating gold to that which existed in the past and must be intentionally remembered in order to maintain its desire for life, gold is, not was, the first green. Gold exists, very tangibly, in and with the green. Their identities are distinct, but the relation between them is intimate and mutually vivifying. One cannot be heard without remembering the other. With his use of the present tense in this line, Frost was so delightfully generous to the nostalgic and to those who hold pleasant memories from the past in their hearts.

The final line is concerning, though. Even though we learned of the relationship that exists between the sacred gold and the profane green, he says that "nothing gold can stay." It seems to me that this line says something more about the nature of the gold itself than anything else. Understood in this way, gold is necessarily temporary. It exists only within the strict confines of time. Some might say that gold, or anything metaphorically referred to as gold, derives its value from its inherent limitations. Gold is not anything to anyone at any time. Instead, it is specific, personal, and fleeting.

At the same time, no matter how many times I read through the poem, I never get the impression that there is something wrong with the temporary life of gold. Frost seems to say that gold is good, but that its goodness rests in its relatively short life. If the presence of gold were not short-lived, then all we would know is the green. This final verse serves as an implicit invocation to gratitude for that which might be experienced for only a short time.

We can also find hope in the dynamic relationship between past and present when we look at the internal structure of the poem. A more sophisticated poetry analyst than I might be able to gather more data for this claim, but it seems to me that this poem in particular can be viewed as a mirror. The first letters of both the first and last lines begin with the letter ‘n’; the first quatrain holds an internal mirror with the second and third lines beginning with "her"; and the second quatrain holds a mirror with the sixth and seventh lines beginning with 'so'. When thought of as a mirror, we could consider the possibility that Frost is conveying truths that imitate one another with the use of different words. The words are not saying the same thing (it’s worth considering whether two words can 'say' the same thing in the first place). Instead, Frost plays with metaphors and word choice to narrow in his perception of reality toward a close proximity with reality itself.

If this poem can be thought of as a mirror, then we should be comforted by the relationship between the first and last lines. Even though nature’s first green is gold, nothing gold can stay. Even though nothing gold can stay, nature’s first green is gold. When these positions are interchanged, I think of the momentary life of gold in relation to and as a manifestation of the eternal life of God. Because we are finite and only God is infinite, that with which we must engage on the natural level must also be finite. In addition, because creation is good and we especially are very good, it must also be the case that finite things can be good, in spite of or even because of their finitude.

For this reason, the gold that we remember and cherish can be thought of as tokens of God’s eternal presence. Even if we get weighed down by our own restrictions and inabilities, we can remember that nature’s first green is gold and that nothing gold can stay. These lines are so precise in their meaning and yet are so distant from a moralistic dogmatism. They’re not written for comfort yet are comforting. They’re not written to disturb yet are disturbing.

As these final months and weeks of college draw to a close, I expect to be drawn back and forth between this comfort and disturbance. In these moments of alternating assurance and questioning, I hope that I and my fellow graduates continue to walk forward on and toward the green while still remembering its close friendship with the gold.

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