"Summons" vs. "Where the Sidewalk Ends"

The poem “Summons” by Robert Francis describes a man trapped inside a darkness and wants someone to take him to the light. He desires to escape the darkness that he was persuaded to go into but needs another to help him. This like the poem “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein are both poems about someone trying to be somewhere in life where they are not.

            “Where the Sidewalk Ends” is instead someone wanting to get out of somewhere is someone wanting to go somewhere. “Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black and the dark street winds and bends.” Silverstein is saying that when people grow up they start to lose their sense of innocence and pure-heartedness and that we need to start going back to that. Both authors use symbolism to show a greater power helping the narrator escape from the darkness they are in. “Tell me the northern lights are on and make me look.” The northern lights are a symbol of worldly awe that is often related to the heavens. The narrator wants God to show him the light so he can escape the darkness. “For the children, they mark, and for the children, they know.” Children are thought up to be miracles of life and so Silverstein is saying that this miracle can help people leave the place of dull dreariness and instead go somewhere where full of joy where “the grass grows soft and bright.”

Silverstein is providing us an instance of how people need to find themselves and escape from the darkness they are in. Francis is giving a broader sense of how we are all trying to escape but sometimes we need a little help along the way. The help in “Where the sidewalk ends being a child showing us the innocence again. “Where the Sidewalk Ends” is a metaphor to the allegory that is “Summons”