Nothing gold can stay.

By:
Norzulaika Sabtu
Nur Fatin Ali
Afdhaliyah Hilwa
The Poem
The poem of Robert Frost (1874-1963), winner of four Pulitzer Prizes
for poetry, are known for being deceptively simple.

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.
About the Poet
Born in California
After his father’s death in 1885, Frost’s mother brought
the family to New England
Frost studied for part of one term at Dartmouth College
in New Hampshire, then he did odd job including
teaching
In 1897, he was enrolled as a special student at Harvard.
He then farmed in New Hampshire,published few poems
in local newspapers,left the farm and taught again.
In 1912, he left for England, hoped to achieve more
popular success as a writer.
By 1915 he had won a considerable reputation, and be
returned to the United States, settling on a farm in
New Hampshire and cultivating the image of the
country-wise farmer-poet.
He was well read in the classics,the Bible, and English
and American literature.
references
1. Best Poems by Jamestown Publisher
2. A Little Literature ( Sylvan Barnet, William Burto,
William E.Cain) by Pearson Longman Publisher
3. The Range of Literature Poetry
( Schneider,Walker,Childs). Published by D. Van
Nostrand
HOW TO STUDY A POEM???
What is a Poem?
Speakers in Poetry
Sensory images and concrete language
Rhythm, rhyme, and repetition
Figurative language
Form in poetry.
What is a poem?
In a way, poems are like dreams. They call up images
from normal life in interesting and unusual ways.
Reading poems in a strictly logical way leaves us with a
feeling of confusion.
Experiencing poems can help us appreciate the
pleasant things in reality with greater awareness and
deal with the undesirable things with more creativity.
Like dreams,poems refresh us and leave us more
capable of coping with life.
Like textbooks, some poems may express complex
ideas and relationships.
Such poems use complete sentences and may follow
certain rules of grammar, capitalization, and
punctuation.
Like diagrams, other poems may use graphics as well
as words to express their meaning.
And like newspaper headlines, most poems try to
attract reader’s attention and convey the poem’s
messages in as few word as possible.
Speakers in poetry
The character whose voice you here.
To identify the speaker, it is often helpful to identify
the poet’s intended audience- that is the person that
the poet is addressing.
The poet may write from the point of view of another
person, character, animal or inanimate object.
The poet may use monologue ( word spoken by only
one speaker) or dialogue ( word spoken by more than
one speaker) to communicate the message of the
poem.
The poet may create a speaker who narrates a poem’s
story from the first-person or third-person of view.
When a poet speaks as another person, character,
animal or object, we say that he or she is taking on a
different persona, or speaking with a different voice
and from different point of view.
 Sensory images and concrete
language
Poets understand the power of images to evoke
feelings. For that reason they often use images in their
poems to recreate experiences,impressions and
moods.
Some poem are seem so real that you can almost reach
out and touch the images described in them.
Poets create this reality by using sensory images-
words and phrases that appeal to your sense.
While concrete language are use to describe things
that can be experienced through the senses.
When poet use concrete language, they call up an image in
your mind by specifically mentioning something that you
can see, smell, touch, hear or taste.
E.g. : flower, leaf, gold
However, abstract words represent ideas, which cannot be
experienced by the sense.\
E.g. : grief, hold, hardest
When you are trying to create a sensory image, concrete
words are much more effective than abstract words.
E.g. My feet rasped against cold stone.
Here, the poet doesn’t say that his or her feet just hit the
sides of the well. Instead, they “rasped” against its “cold
stone”.
This help you understand that the wall of the well were
cold,rough,scratchy, and unpleasant.
Images and mood
The mood of a piece of writing is the atmosphere or
feeling it creates.
A poet develops a mood in a number of ways,
including carefully choosing images that support the
mood.
E.g. the image of “moonlight over a sleeping village”
might create a peaceful mood, while the image of “fire
engines racing through streets with sirens blaring”
probably create a frantic, excited mood
Rhythm, rhyme and repetition
Poets can create patterns of accented and unaccented
syllables that stress selected words and reinforced
particular feelings.
Poets can arrange rhyming words in selected patterns.
Poets can repeat selected sounds, words, and phrases
to suggest or emphasize particular words, feelings,
and ideas.
 Rhythm
Rhythm is a musical quality produced by the repetition of
stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm occurs in all
forms of language, both written and spoken, but is
particularly important in poetry
The most obvious king of rhythm is the regular repetition
of stressed and unstressed syllables found in some poetry.
Rhythm is significant in poetry because poetry is so
emotionally charged and intense.
Rhythm can be measured in terms of heavily stressed to less
stressed syllables. Rhythm usually consisting of one heavily
accented syllable and one or more lightly accented syllable.
 Rhyme
Rhyme are words whose ending sounds are the same or very
similar .There are 2 types of rhymes.
Perfect rhymes
Perfect rhymes can be classified according to the number of
syllables included in the rhyme , which is dictated by the
location of the final stressed syllable.
Masculine : a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable
of the words. (gold, hold)
Feminine : consist of two or more words together. (high way,
my way)
Dactylic : a rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate
(third from last) syllable (cacophonies, Aristophanes)
General rhymes
In the general sense, rhyme can refer to various kinds of
phonetic similarity between words, and to the use of such
similar-sounding words in organizing verse. Rhymes in this
general sense are classified according to the degree and manner
of the phonetic similarity:
Syllabic: a rhyme in which the last syllable of each word
sounds the same but does not necessarily contain vowels.
(cleaver, silver, or pitter, patter)
Imperfect : a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed
syllable. (wing, caring)
Semi rhyme : a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word.
(bend, ending)
oblique (or slant/forced): a rhyme with an imperfect match
in sound. (green, fiend; one, thumb)
Assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate) Assonance is sometimes
used to refer to slant rhymes.
Consonance: matching consonants. (rabies, robbers)
Half rhyme : (or sprung rhyme): matching final consonants. (bent,
ant)
Alliteration (or head rhyme): matching initial consonants.
(short,ship)

Example of rhyme
One, two,
Buckle my shoe.
Three, four,
Shut the door.
Repetition
Repetition of a sound, syllable, word, phrase, line,
stanza, or metrical pattern is a basic unifying device in
all poetry.
Repetition is divided into 3 :
Alliteration is a literary device that consists in
repeating the same consonant sound at the beginning
of two or more words in close succession.
Example : “ So dawn goes down to day”
Assonance : the repetition of vowel sounds in words
that are close together.
Example: "Do you like blue?"the /uː/ ("o"/"ou"/"ue"
sound) is repeated within the sentence
Consonance : the repetition of consonant with different
vowel sounds in words near each other in a line.
Example : “her hardest hue to hold”
Anaphor : repetition of the same word at the
beginning of the lines.
Example: “her hardest hue to hold”
“ her early leaf’s a flower”
Figurative language
Figurative language uses "figures of speech" - a way of
saying something other than the literal meaning of the
words.
Figures of speech are words that create strong images
in reader’s minds.
Metaphor A figure of speech in which a comparison
is made between two things essentially unalike.
Without using “like” or “as”.
Simile A figure of speech in which a comparison is
expressed by the specific use of a word or phrase such
as: like, as, than, seems or as if.
Personification A type of metaphor in which distinct human
qualities, e.g., honesty, emotion, volition, etc., are attributed to an
animal, object or idea.

Symbol A thing (could be an object, person, situation or action)

which stands for something else more abstract. For example our
flag is the symbol of our country.

Paradox A statement or situation containing apparently

contradictory or incompatible elements, but on closer inspection
may be true.  

Hyperbole A bold, deliberate overstatement not intended to be

taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a
statement.
Forms of poetry
Some of the characteristics of poetry are these :
1. Its appearance, or form, is different from other forms
of writing.
2. It uses intense and striking language to present
ideas and feelings
3. It uses as few words as possible to express ideas and
feelings.
4. It emphasizes ideas and feelings through the
effective uses of sound, including rhythmic
patterns,rhymes, and other forms of repetition.
Two types of poetry
Free verse: poetry that does not follow a particular
pattern of rhythm or rhyme.
Their language uses imagery of all sorts, and such
sound techniques as alliteration, but it otherwise
sounds like normal conversation.
Concrete poetry: has a special appearance.
The poet arranges the words in a shape that suggest
the subject of the poem.
The poem may follow a definite pattern of rhythm and
rhyme, it may be free verse, or it may lie somewhere in
between.
Analysis of nothing gold can stay
The rhyme scheme is AABBCCDD
The type of ryhme for this poem is masculine ryhme.

Alliteration -- “Nature's first green is gold”

-- “Her hardest hue to hold”
-- “So dawn goes down to day”

 Personification : referring to Nature as a female.

This is a long-standing association with the idea of
"Mother Nature" providing sustenance to our world.
The poet create a speaker who narrates a poem’s story
from the first person or third person of view

Metaphor : “Nature’s first green is gold”

This explain the similarities between gold and the
nature’s first green.
Symbol : “gold” symbolizes the summer
Assonance : “then leaf subsides to leaf”
“so Eden sank to grief”
Anaphor : “ her hardest hue to hold”
“ her early leaf’s a flower”