# Nothing Gold Can Stay

By Robert Frost. Sino-Mini translation, 9 September 2026.

No vocabulary or grammar changes are proposed by this translation. Eden remains a proper name.

Source: [Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148652/nothing-gold-can-stay-5c095cc5ab679), reproducing the public-domain poem from *New Hampshire* (1923). English lines displayed on the reading page are Frost’s original, not literal back-translations.

## Sino-Mini

活 世 的 第 一 绿 色 乃 黄 金。  
在 兮 留 乃 这 色，呈 最 更 难。  
它 早 叶 乃 花。  
但 不 后 一 钟。  
则，叶 兮 变 乃 叶。  
然，Eden 兮 变 呈 悲。  
然，早 晨 兮 变 乃 日。  
黄 金 的 物 兮 不 能 留。

## Pinyin

huó shì de dì yī lǜ sè nǎi huáng jīn。  
zài xī liú nǎi zhè sè，chéng zuì gèng nán。  
tā zǎo yè nǎi huā。  
dàn bù hòu yī zhōng。  
zé，yè xī biàn nǎi yè。  
rán，Eden xī biàn chéng bēi。  
rán，zǎo chén xī biàn nǎi rì。  
huáng jīn de wù xī bù néng liú。

## Original and literal sense

| Frost’s original | Literal sense of the translation |
| --- | --- |
| Nature’s first green is gold, | The living world’s first green colour is yellow metal. |
| Her hardest hue to hold. | Retaining this colour is hardest. |
| Her early leaf’s a flower; | Its early leaf is a flower. |
| But only so an hour. | But not after one hour. |
| Then leaf subsides to leaf. | Then, leaf becomes leaf. |
| So Eden sank to grief, | Thus, Eden becomes sad. |
| So dawn goes down to day. | Thus, early morning becomes day. |
| Nothing gold can stay. | Golden (yellow-metal) things cannot remain. |

## Translation choices and limitations

- **Gold:** 金 means metal. 黄 金 is the ordinary description “yellow metal,” evoking gold in this poem without giving 金 a second dictionary meaning. 黄 金 的 物 groups “yellow metal” before “thing.” These expressions retain the gold metaphor approximately; neither identifies elemental gold precisely. They are contextual descriptions, not additional vocabulary entries.
- **Nature:** 活 世 (“living world”) gives the poem a living subject without assigning 野 the rejected general sense “nature.” 的 groups 活 世 before the following noun phrase. This is narrower than nature as the whole physical universe, but suits the leaves and colours here.
- **Hardest hue to hold:** An active participle makes “retaining this colour” the subject. 最 更 难 supplies the maximum degree; the comparison set is other colour-retention situations. The original’s compressed noun phrase becomes a complete statement.
- **Only an hour:** 但 不 后 一 钟 means “But not after one hour.” 不 modifies 后 一 钟 under the general rule that modifiers precede the expressions they modify. The time phrase continues the preceding statement without repeating its subject and predicate. This is ordinary grammar, not poetic ellipsis or a special negation construction. No topic comma is needed because no new main clause follows. The wording states the time limit without separately asserting an exact duration.
- **Subsiding and sinking:** Repeated 变 links the three transformations. It preserves their direction from one state to another, but loses Frost’s repeated physical image of downward motion. 降 is not borrowed for this purpose: its adopted sense is surrender. 悲 names sadness rather than grief as a distinct noun.
- **Dawn:** 早 晨 (“early morning”) approximates dawn. 日 supplies day in the established temporal context. No new dawn word is introduced.
- **Nothing can stay:** 黄 金 的 物 names golden things; 兮 不 能 留 denies their ability to remain. The gold description is figurative, as in the opening line.
- **Poetic form:** All eight lines and their sequence are retained. Rhyme and Frost’s metre are not reproduced. Pinyin uses adopted dictionary readings rather than transcribing Mandarin tone sandhi.

No new words, fixed compounds, or grammatical exceptions were added. The largest losses to review are the downward-motion motif, the precision of “gold” and “dawn,” and the indirect rendering of the one-hour limit.