A poetic comparison of C. Lewis’s “Walking Away” and R. Hoban’s “Summer Recorded”

C.D. Lewis’s “Walking Away” and Russell Hoban’s “Summer Recorded” are two poems about joyful memories now lost in the sands of time. Both use metaphoric language, and similies to describe the loss and joy the poet feels inside. Both poets use vivid imagery to leave portraits in the reader’s mind of nature’s beauty. Yet, “Walking away” is a memory of the child he lost, while letting him grow up. While, “Summer recorded plays the happy memories of a time now long lost in the past.

“Walking Away”, describes the loss C. D. Lewis feels when taking his son to “[his] first game of football” (L3). He feels he is watching his son “go drifting away” (L5). He has “had worse partings” (L16) yet no parting annoys him as much as this one: “but none that so gnaws at my mind still” (L17). Whereas “Summer Recorded” remembers beautiful times now lost, and how R. Hoban would adore having them

“Walking Away” is a memory of a child’s first chance at growing up. You can no longer protect your child from going “into a wilderness” (L9), into he real world. C. Day Lewis feels lost and yet joyful that his son is growing up and you realize hoe “love is proved in the letting go” (L20). “ Summer Recorded” is a happy memory “ of noon and all summer spinning slowly on it’s reel” (L8).

His memories are like “the roles of a piano lingering honeyed on the air” (L2). He feels that “ each sounded moment lasts a fraction longer than the beat of seconds spun out by the clock”(L5-6) or his memories last longer in his mind than they did when they happened.

Each poem describes the loss of something once joyful, by their use of metaphoric language and similies. In “Walking Away” the poet feels he is watching his son “like a satellite wrenched from nits orbit, go drifting away” (L5). He wants his son to have a straight path, set out for him. Yet, his son “finds no path where the p

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