Nothing Gold Can Stay
by Robert Frost
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.
Saltman, Judith, editor. 1985. The Riverside Anthology of Children's Literature, sixth edition. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 039535773X.
Taking my son to his
First Day of Kindergarten
by William Trowbridge
As the eight o'clock bell spills
its racket into this mild September,
it is I, not he, who hesitates
in the clamor toward the open doors,
who spots the little ruffian throwing rocks
at the Trash-Master by the swings,
who shyly searches for Room 106,
where Miss Wynn waits with the name tags.
The halls still gust and flow
with the rush of new dresses, the scent
of denim and sharpened pencils.
Eighth-graders arrange themselves
in groups to tower in their nonchalance,
eyeing each other like sprinters at the blocks.
Near 106, a bulletin board
declares "The Season of Changes"
above a paper grove of sugar maples.
He pulls me on, then runs ahead,
fearless, blameless, gone.
Nye, Naomi Shihab. 1999. What have you lost? Photographs by Michael Nye. New York:
Greenwillow Books. ISBN 0688161847.
____________________________________
Extension
Each of these poems talks about things in life that only last for a time - the reality in
life that you cannot be young forever, things won't always stay the same, nothing "gold" can remain. Divide the students
into small groups and have them make a list of things they know cannot always be the way they are now. Give them freedom
to come up with a wide range of ideas.
