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”
