Comparison of The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found

Andrew Hounslow 10H

The Little Boy Lost and The Little Boy Found are two poems that are quite different to each other, in the aspect of language used, themes and ideas, and imagery. I shall look at each poem in detail in this essay, along with the different ideas that I get from them.

In The Little Boy Lost, the first stanza of the poem gives the reader images of a father ignoring, possibly abandoning his son and walking away from him. This stanza is written in first person, to show us how confused the boy is. The language the boy uses in the first stanza could tell us that his father is walking away from him completely out-of-the-blue, and he does not know what he has done and does not know why his father is leaving him. In the second stanza, we can truly see the effects of a little boy being lost. The images we get are of a young child, alone, with “no father there”, and “wet with dew”. And the language in the second stanza is the typical language describing a lost child, scared and crying. But, the “vapour” in line 4 of the second stanza could symbolise a lost and confused child going towards a light, trying anything to get out of the darkness, and the feeling of loneliness.

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However, in The Little Boy Found, we can tell from the title that this poem will be more optimistic and positive. In the first stanza, in the first two lines, the imagery hasn’t changed from A Little Boy Lost, a child lost and crying. But, in the last two lines of this stanza, God appears before him. This contrasts to The Little Boy Lost because his father abandoned him, but God, the “Father” to all living things comes to find him. And the introduction of the colour white in the darkness extends the idea that this poem will be ...