Koko

Name: Oyegbesan Ayodele

Course: Eng 102

Date: 21st April 2012

“AS I WALKED OUT ONE EVENING”

The poem “As I Walked out one Evening” by W.H Auden contains fifteen four-line stanzas rhyming abcb. The rhymes are masculine and aimed to pass a love message across to it audience. It shows a lover professing his undying love for the girl he loves. As the poem continues it has different narrators who make the theme of the poem to change. Each narrator gives their own opinion concerning the battle between love and time.

The first narrator is the lover who believes that their love is timeless. They make it look as if their love is perfect and shows how it was impossible for their love to be separated. This expression of perfection is seen when the narrator says that their love could only be stopped when “China and Africa meet.” This is obviously impossible. But again we realize that the love they share may not be able to last forever because of time and how unconquerable time is. The clocks in the poem speak for time and when it rings as if their love is a lie and time intervenes. Apparently no matter how strong your love is time doesn’t give preferential treatment to anyone because it spares no one. It is believed that the “Flower of the Ages” of the lovers will not be able to last forever because Time says “Into many a green valley rifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances and the diver's brilliant bow.”

While the last narrator opinion was diverse from the first narrator; he believed that neither time nor love could be conquered. He claims that although time cannot change but as suggested by the clock that it is not cruel. His perception about love would be strange to many; his view maybe based on his being a homosexual. He was lenient about love and said that a person can choose to love who they want to. This is evident when he said that one can love their crooked neighbor with their crooked heart.

In a nutshell, the two narrators shouldn’t be...