Diane Mills

Lock Haven

“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 down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.”

–Robert Frost, 1923

Robert Frost wrote this poem in 1923, and he was awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry the following year.

This spring, while perusing a small book store in Tarrytown, N.Y., I purchased “The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness and Joy,” edited by John Brehm.

My intention was to read one poem each day, as a way of finding peace amid the constant barrage of negative news and the threats to our way of life.

When I read Frost’s poem this morning, I felt it carried a poignancy beyond what he may have originally intended. To me, it resonates as a prediction of the impermanence of our own “Eden” — the United States of America — endangered by a lust for gold in the heart of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It feels as if he is willing to trade our precious democracy for a handful of gold.

(Even Judas Iscariot betrayed for silver.)