In the circus? im not entirely sure though
I'm making a assumption that the poem intends that, nothing gold can stay. like a leaf eventually will die and a tree will wither away and the sun will turn into the moon, basically nothing stays the same, eventually time will go forward and things will change. makes sense?
The answer is the second one
The denotation of a word or phrase is its explicit or direct meaning. ... The connotation of a word or phrase is the associated or secondary meaning; it can be something suggested or implied by a word or thing, rather than being explicitly named or described.