In Robert Frost’s poem,“Nothing Gold Can Stay”, he uses the modernist era themes of disillusionment and suggestion to talk about his view of the world. In “Nothing Gold Can Stay”, Frost starts off the poem by talking about how beautiful nature is by saying, “Nature’s first green is gold”, but then in the next line he says, “Her hardest hue to hold” which implies that it does not stay beautiful for very long (Frost 1-2). In the next few lines of the poem, Frost goes back and forth by talking about the true beauty of nature, and then the reality of how long the beauty lasts. This is evident in the last two lines of the poem, when Frost states, ” So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.” (Frost 7-8), which shows his belief that no matter how beautiful something might be, it will not last. This showed the modernist era theme of lyricism with the way he structured his whole poem.
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a true example of modernist literary work. The poem painted an image of nature in the readers head, and went on to talk about how inevitably it will not last. Frost wrote with a very pessimistic attitude that a lot of Modernists had, because they believed that, “their old techniques had failed” (Norton Modernism). Frost’s use of rhyme also allowed for the poem to have a consistent flow and structure to the poem. Frost used the words “dawn “and “day” to really drive the theme that nothing will last, because no matter how beautiful dawn may be, it will always turn into day.