Robert Frost quite frequently wrote about nature, usually using the northeastern part of the United States, New England, as his landscape. In “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” Frost describes a specific landscape but also works within a long tradition among poets to comment on the perpetual changing of nature. This idea of continual change, also known as mutability, was a favored topic of Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). Poems with this theme generally center on the idea of nature’s transience (nothing lasts forever), the inevitability of change, and the poignancy of the passage of time. “Nothing Gold Can Stay” aligns with all these hallmarks, though Frost uses a succinct form to clarify nature’s progress.

From the beginning, Frost emphasizes the fleeting nature of “gold” (Line 1). The color—or the idea of something being gold and therefore precious—is the “hardest hue to hold” (Line 2). The flowering of this leaf happens “only so an hour” (Line 4). This indicates the painful futility of trying to hold on to that which is transitory. This is evidenced by the progression of imagery tied to the passage of seasons.