Nothing Gold Can Stay Transience Quotes

The speaker seems to think that the idea that "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is so important that he uses it for both the title and the last line of the poem. Ironically, the repetition and prominent placement of this line make it so that, even though nothing gold can stay, this line sticks in the reader's head. We guess Frost didn't think his truisms were gold.

This line personifies nature to let us know about the transience of gold, which line 1 claims is nature's first green. It makes us think of nature as a teenage girl squeezing lemon juice or blond dye in her hair to try to make it golden-blond. But, alas, the golden colors just weren't meant to last for long, and no matter how hard she tries, the gold will always fade.

Again, the poem establishes the transience of spring, of golden trees and their blooms. "Hour" is figurative here; after all, trees can bloom for weeks. Perhaps when something is so beautiful that you could stare at it forever, a week might as well be as short as an hour.

This line refers to the early leaf (actually a flower) turning into a normal, green leaf. The word "subsides" lets us know that this transformation isn't exactly a good thing. "Subsides" means to sink down, so the change from early to later leaf is a step down. It would be nice if things always changed for the better, but this poem suggests that might not be so—like it or not.

If there's an archetypal example of impermanence, the Garden of Eden is it. The famous biblical story of original sin shows how, at least in the Bible, humans have never been able to exist in a state of paradisiacal perfection. There's something in the nature of the world, and in human nature, that leads to transience.

Again, the poem hints that something is changing for the worse. When we think about dawn, we normally think about the sun rising. That's a positive thing, filling us with anticipation of the warmth of the day. But the negative idea of dawn going down to day makes us think about how we'll miss the beautiful colors of dawn once it's gone.