Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay Literary Elements

Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View

The speaker is a distant third person who becomes more present in the final line, which states the reason for his grief.

Form and Meter

This is a short poem comprising four rhyming couplets.

Metaphors and Similes

The poem compares green to gold, a metaphor complicated by the dual meaning of gold as both a mineral element and a color; both are precious but for different reasons, as the mineral is rare and the color never lasts in natural light, but instead signifies transitional moments between day and night. The poem also compares Nature's "early leaf" to a flower to show the fleetingness of early spring. Finally, on the broadest scale, the "gold" in "Nothing gold can stay" is a metaphor for goodness and beauty, things the speaker treasures.

Alliteration and Assonance

"Her hardest hue to hold."

Irony

Ironically, "nature's first green" is the most beautiful of seasons, but is also the quickest to pass.

Genre

Nature poetry

Setting

The poem is not narrative, but the descriptions are of nature turning from early spring to later seasons.

Tone

The poem is neutral in tone, never outright revealing the speaker or their emotions, but the neutrality is tinged with sorrow.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist is the speaker, and the antagonist is arguably mortality and aging.

Major Conflict

The conflict in this poem is between beauty or vitality and aging, two opposing forces.

Climax

The climax of this poem is in the final line, which is also the title of the poem. "Nothing gold can stay" both summarizes the poem and makes the speaker's grief more palpable.

Foreshadowing

The use of tension and release in the first two couplets foreshadows the turn in the poem to a darker tone than the first and third lines suggest.

Understatement

N/a

Allusions

The speaker alludes to the Garden of Eden in this poem.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

Eden is used as a metonym for paradise or beauty. The "first green" is a metonym for early spring, as is the "early leaf." "An hour" is an example of synecdoche; "an hour" stands in for an unspecified longer period of time, such as part of a season, a whole season, or part of a lifetime.

Personification

Nature is personified and described as female. Eden, too, is possibly personified, though this is less clear.

Hyperbole

N/A

Onomatopoeia

N/A

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