This essay was about the similarity of two poems which entitled “Nothing Gold can stay” and “Leader of the people”. The first similarity of those two poems is that in both situations there was an experience of a “gold day”. And the another similarity is surviving life.But the most common difference between the two works of writing is nature vs. human.
The poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and the short story “Leader of the People” both have themes that focus on the miracle of life. The miracle of life describes the experiences and changes one experience from birth to death. Although the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” describes that from the moment we are born our lives and what they will entitle will never be the same, we learn from “Leader of the People” that we can remember those times and retell them over and over again.
The first similarity between “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and “Leader of the People” is that in both situations there was an experience of a “gold day”. In “Nothing Gold Can Stay” the “gold day” is perceived as the growth of a new plant. In the first line, “Nature’s first green is gold” explains a new, young plant at its earliest stage in life. In “Leader of the People”, grandpa is the one who experienced a “gold day.” Grandpa’s “gold day” was when he was younger and he was helping lead his people out West. This experience in his life is understood as a “gold day” because it left a special mark in his life that he recalls every time he tells his story.
In the poem and story another similarity is surviving life. In the poem the plant can be watered to stay alive, where as in the short story grandpa’s stories keep him alive. Grandpa’s daughter knew his past was a part of who he was, and always would be. “Well, it’s everything to him,” she said to her husband who disliked hearing the same story retold time after time. In the poem “Her early leaf’s a flower, but only so an hour” relates to how life happens so quick, and relates to grandpa and how he has grown since his days of leading his people, but he relives those days each time he tells his stories.
Between the poem and the short story differences can be seen. One difference is that plants can not tell about the past, but grandpa can. Grandpa misses his days of being a leader and the feeling it brought to him. He enjoys telling his stories and seeing the pictures run through his head as if he were doing it all over again. Many of his stories were similar and began with him asking the question, “Did I ever tell you how I wanted each wagon to carry a long iron plate?” In the poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” the quote “Her hardest hue to hold” stands for the fact that a plant can not retell stories of the gold.
One common difference between the two works of writing is nature vs. human. The poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” focuses’s on a plants cycle from its youth to when “leaf subsided to leaf” which represents the aging and washing away of youth and the experiences that once existed. The short story, however, is from the human point of view. Grandpa was the main subject, and was viewed as someone who can not let go of his past life over all his years of living. “I was the leader, but if I hadn’t been there, someone else would have been the head.”
Plants are green when they first bloom, but nothing can stay young forever. Grandpa wishes he could still be young and relive his times of being a leader and traveling West. In the end both the plant and grandpa experience changes and grow old.
