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.
– Nothing Gold Can Stay a poem
by Robert Frost.
It took Robert Frost just
eight lines to give us, what Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own refers to
as "a nugget of pure truth". Etched in our memory, we wrap our minds
around these lines and it seems we can fill sheets upon sheets of paper trying
to fathom their depth. While Robert Frost needed only eight lines.
"Like a piece of ice on a hot
stove the poem must ride on its own melting...Read it a hundred times; it will
forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose
its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went."
– Robert Frost, "The Figure a Poem Makes"
– Robert Frost, "The Figure a Poem Makes"
Robert Frost referred to
poetry as "a momentary stay against confusion". He elevated poetry
to the level of science– as both deal in metaphors. Then went on to say,
"all metaphors break down somewhere". His philosophy, where doubt
follows faith, and uncertainty follows certainty, is something that
practitioners of Eastern philosophy, would totally "get" without the
need for sheets upon sheets of paper.
