This week’s poem has been selected in memory of my grandfather, John T. “Jack” O’Hare, who passed away earlier this week. He truly possessed, in the words of my brother, “that Irish thirst for stories,” and found much joy in the stories told by Robert Frost. I can still recall the boyhood excitement which accompanied listening to one of my grandfather’s many tales, and see in this poem, one of his favorites, a continuation of that tradition.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

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.

Robert Frost