"Nothing Gold Can Stay" Breakdown

Author's Note: This is just a simple breakdown of the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost and how it relates to the story.

Nature's first green and gold,
This line of the poem is talking about the sunrise. How if Dally would have just looked at a sunrise or sunset, he might have been a better person.

Her hardest hue to hold,
This means that all of the colors and brightness is hard to capture mentally. That's why Ponyboy, Johnny, and Cherry always looked at sunrises and sunsets, to try to capture the picture.

Her early leafs a flower,
This is talking about the climax of the story. When Johnny kills Bob, everybody's attitude changed and nothing in the novel was ever the same again. Just like the changing of a leaf to a flower.

But only so an hour,
This means that all of the excitement of Johnny killing Bob was gone.

Then leaf subsides to leaf,
I believe that this relates to The Outsider's every excitement in their town has died and normal subsided back to normal.

So Eden sank to grief,
This means that the innocence or purity of Johnny and Ponyboy were lost after he murdered Bob.

So dawn goes to day,
I predict that this means that the sunrise/sunset is over and the brilliance Is done.

Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Finally, this last line says that nothing really exciting can stay exciting.