Nature

Although it can be read in “Nothing Gold Can Stay” as both a character and a symbol, Nature appears in the poem most clearly as a setting. The poem was written in the twentieth century, but its portrayal of nature is timeless. The poem describes nature’s colors (“green,” “gold”), plants (“leaf,” ‘flower”), and phenomena (“dawn,” “day”), characteristics that remain fixed across history (1-7). This fixedness gives a pristine, ethereal quality to the natural setting, a quality amplified by humanity’s absence from the poem. Despite the poem’s lack of allusions to humanity and the modern world, however, the impermanence of “gold” in the nature setting also symbolizes general impermanence in the current world, both past and present (1).

Eden

A location that connects to the poem’s central setting (“Nature”) is Eden, a setting mentioned in line six (1). The allusion to Eden is biblical – Eden is a...