The subject of the poem is life. When you look at it in depth, its entirety is a metaphor for the passing of life. Nature's first green is gold (the birth of a child, or new life), her hardest hue to hold (innocence passes fast with life, no matter how hard we try to hold on to it). Her early leaf's a flower; but only so an hour (again with the quick passing of time for life.) The leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief (death at the end of someone's life and the mourning that comes with it, if only a second to the hour of life), so dawn goes down to day (mourning is over, and the days continue after that someone passes and everyone has mourned). Nothing gold can stay (life is valuable, like gold, and vanishes much in the same way).
Thomas Paine questioned British authority for many reasons. Some of the main ones were that Britain is too far away and because of that should leave America alone; another was that they always wage wars in which America suffers; another was that the American people ran away from the crown just to be greeted by a country where the same crown rules. The list of reasons goes on and on and on.
Answer:
women in Chaucer's time were to be obedient and submissive to male authority, he creates female characters in the Canterbury Tales that challenge the patriarchal order: the Wife of Bath is the most important and unique of these women.
