Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away – until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby, Chapter 9. As Nick sits on Gatsby’s beach he thinks about a time when East Egg was pure, then it was the old island where great trees stood instead of big mansions like Gatsby’s house. And he reflects on Gatsby’s failure to complete his American Dream by winning Daisy.