Anthology - Walking Away

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day -

A sunny day with leaves just turning,

The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play

Your first game of football, then, like a satellite

Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see

You walking away from me towards the school

With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free

Into a wilderness, the gait of one

Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away

Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,

Has something I never quite grasp to convey

About nature’s give-and-take - the small, the scorching

Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so

Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly

Saying what God alone could perfectly show -

How selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go.

THEMES:

  • aging

  • childhood

  • paternal/parental love

  • distance

  • memory

FORM:

  • dramatic monologue

    • represents speaker’s loneliness and isolation

STRUCTURE:

  • four regular quintains

    • contrasts theme of change and presents change as normal

  • regular ABACA rhyme scheme

    • contrasts theme of change and presents change as normal

  • irregular metre

    • represents tumultuous emotions and change

  • enjambment

    • represents undue separation

LANGUAGE:

  • semantic field of flight

    • simile, enjambment - “like a satellite // wrenched from its orbit“

    • metaphor, fricative alliteration, natural imagery, zoomorphism - “pathos of a half-fledged thing set free“

    • simile, natural imagery, phytomorphism - “like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem“

  • sibilance, anaphora - “the small, the scorching“

  • pathetic fallacy, natural imagery - “sunny day with leaves just turning“

  • direct address - “you walking away“

  • 3rd person conversion - “that hesitant figure”

  • assonance, ‘l’ alliteration, period - “selfhood begins with the walking away, // and love is proved in the letting go.“

  • religious imagery, internal rhyme - “what God alone could perfectly show“

CONTEXT:

  • written by Cecil Day-Lewis

  • semi-autobiographical - originally subtitled ‘for Sean’, Day-Lewis’ son who went to boarding school

  • brought up by his father as mother died when he was very young