Walking Away - Cecil Day-Lewis

• Walking Away, written by the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, a former Poet Laureate, reflects on the separation and distance which occurs between parent and child as time passes. The autobiographical poem explores the painful process as a natural part of life and relationships.
• “It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day —

  A sunny day with leaves just turning,”
• • The poem begins with a measure of time passing, suggesting the triggering of a memory
• • Day Lewis’ speaker marks the moment as significant as they remember a day eighteen years ago 
  • The poet uses natural imagery to describe the day as autumnal, creating a nostalgic mood
• The touch-lines new-ruled — since I watched you play

  Your first game of football, then, like a satellite”
• • The poem’s speaker describes the day, eighteen years ago, when they watched their child play football
• “Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

  Behind a scatter of boys. I can see

  You walking away from me towards the school”
• • However, the violent image of the satellite pulled out of orbit conveys the way the parent feels as their child is no longer dependent on them and their life no longer revolves around the parent
• “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.”
• • The poet uses natural imagery again to present the natural process of separation in family relationships:
  • Here, he uses the image of a baby bird flying from its nest into the dangerous wilderness to represent the child leaving the safety of the home
  • The imagery conveys the parents own feelings of hesitation
• “That hesitant figure, eddying away

  Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem
• • The new life the child is about to experience is conveyed with the simile, comparing the child to a seed about to grow 
• “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”
• • The poet uses language which presents the relentless agony of parent and child separation: 
  • The memory “gnaws” even eighteen years later
  • The poet ends the line with the word “roughly” to highlight the harsh emotions felt
• “Saying what God alone could perfectly show —

  How selfhood begins with a walking away,

  And love is proved in the letting go.”
• • The speaker ends the monologue referring to religious ideas:
  • The speaker believes God and nature are at work in the process
  • He believes love is felt most strongly at moments of separation 
• Walking Away presents the first-person perspective of a parent as they remember watching their child leave for school: “I can see you walking away”
• The poem follows a disciplined ABACA rhyme scheme to reflect the parent’s stable tone as they reflect
• The speaker begins with past-tense verbs to indicate the moment the speaker begins his reflection: “since I watched you play/Your first game of football”
• The second stanza depicts the speaker going back in time to their child’s first day of school, however the speaker uses present tense verbs to convey the immediacy of the vivid memory:
• The poet uses natural imagery to present the vividness of the memory: 

  • The speaker remembers how it was “a sunny day with the leaves just turning”, using the season of autumn to present the nostalgia of the moment
• The speaker compares the moment of separation to a satellite “wrenched” from its orbit:

  • The verb “wrenched” implies a destructive and sudden action which suggests the unpreparedness of the parent
  • Later, the speaker uses the present-tense verb “gnaws” to imply the continued pain
• • The poem, written from a first-person perspective has a personal tone as the parent silently addresses their child during a painful memory
  • However, the poet has stated the poem is about all parents and their similar experiences, suggesting the timeless nature of complex family love
• • Walking Away, although written In the 1960s, was influenced by the Romantic tradition of poetry, which centres around complex emotions