Editor's Note: "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost appears in his poetry collection, "New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes," which was first published in 1923. The eight-line poem consists of four couplets. Couplets are two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme to form a unit.
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.
