Robert Frost's Mid-Term Break And Nothing Gold Can Stay

The affect change has on its surroundings and anything involved could be very detrimental depending on the situation. The poems “Mid-Term Break” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” are similar, for they are both poems that talk about change. Throughout these poems, it is displayed that change has a negative effect on its surroundings because what comes first, which is the youth that is considered precious, comes to an end and what follows is second best. The first stage of life is precious and when it changes, or ages, a period of grief comes as a result. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a poem written by Robert Frost in the early 1930’s. Most of Robert’s poems are written about the natural world, and this particular poem uses nature to focus on how death

In Robert Frost’s poem, “Nothing Gold Can Change,” the first greens are considered the precious youth. Frost states, “Her early leaf’s a flower,” displaying the idea of a precious youth within the flower (Line 3). “Her early leaf” is referring to spring, while the “flower” metaphor displays spring as being as delicate as a flower (3). Seamus Heaney speaks of youth twice in his poem, “Mid-term Break.” His first, and most obvious mention of youth is the age of the young boy that dies. Heaney makes it obvious that the boy is young by stating, “a four-foot box, a foot for every year” (22). This means that the boy was only four years old at his death and the setting of this poem. The second, and less obvious mention of youth in this poem is the teenage college student. The student is not as young as the deceased child or even compared on the same scale for that matter, but it is obvious that the student is young and immature due to some of the inferences Seamus makes. Frost’s poem states, “I was embarrassed by old men standing up to shake my hand” (8-9). This embarrassment showed that even though he was not young in his age, his maturity was very youthful and underdeveloped. A mature teenager would know how to act and even respond in situations of interaction with adults. In these few references, these poets both inference youth as precious and

The last common theme between “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Mid-term Break” is the presence of grieving after an unwanted change had occurred. After imminent change or death, there is a period of grief that follows. Change and grief go hand in hand with no way to escape one or the other. After the grieving process is triggered, a flow of confusing and unfamiliar emotions takes place (“Change, Loss, And Grief”). It is known that everyone grieves differently, for their emotions, order they appear, and how they express them all vary from person to person (Axelrod). In “Mid-term Break,” the family, friends, and neighbors are grieving the death of the young boy in their own personal ways. Heaney pictures the mother by describing her mourning as “angry tearless sighs” (Line 13). This quote shows that the mother’s form of grief is responding to the accident in anger and almost disbelief, which, according to Julie Axelrod, is considered the denial and isolation stage. Heaney depicts the father crying at the funeral of his son, which is the complete opposite of that of his wife. In Frost’s poem, he portrays grief in the line that reads “so Eden sank to grief” (6). This quote implies that nature is grieving as the seasons change just as the Garden of Eden grieved when it fell from perfection after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden