In this poem, as the title ‘To the Foot from its Child’ suggests, ‘foot’ is the keyword in the poem. The poet uses ‘foot’ as a metaphor for his view of ‘life’. The poet personifies the ‘foot’ and focuses his attention on the ‘life’ of man, using the ‘foot’ as the protagonist. ‘Life’ begins in infancy and so even in the poem, ‘life’ begins as an infant’s foot.

It is natural that children, who are naive and innocent, do not know that their foot is meant for walking and it has a function to discharge. Through the use of the ‘foot’ as a metaphor, the poet cleverly brings out the battle between harsh realities of life symbolically expressed as stones, streets, ladder, bits of glass, etc. The child dreams of becoming a butterfly or an apple. So naturally, the metaphor of foot helps the poet to convey his meaning through an imaginary battle fought between the child’s foot and the surfaces on which the child is likely to walk.

The child’s foot is sure to be hurt when it walks on a street laden with stones and bits of glass and paths in the rough earth and when it climbs the ladder pressing his soft foot on the pointed edges of the rungs of the ladder. Then it realizes that it is a ‘foot’. Here, the poet wants the reader to know that the adult world fights against the spirit of the child and makes him become aware of his role as an individual in human society. At this stage, the foot is imprisoned in a shoe, which means, the child’s consciousness reaches maturity and adulthood.

Adulthood is now represented as ‘adult foot’ enclosed in a shoe. The adult foot gropes in the dark and learns about the harsh realities of life like a blind man. Here, it means, unlike the child’s foot which had more .freedom than the adult’s, the adult foot has to work in a rigid mould given by the society. The ‘shoe’ represents this framework given by society. Here again, the ‘foot’ as a metaphor comes to his help. Therefore, the poet chooses ‘shoe’ as representing societal norms and traditions.

The blind adult foot now walks and works without respite until he dies. The different professions of man are mentioned. The adult foot may be a man’s foot or a woman’s foot and keeps walking through fields, markets, mines and ministries, and finally toils hard scarcely finding time to enjoy ‘love’ and ‘sleep’. Here also the metaphor of the ‘foot’ facilitates the expression in the line ‘scarcely taking time to bare itself in love or sleep’. Finally, it ceases to be a ‘foot’ when a man chooses to stop working. Thus,

the ‘foot’ as a metaphor has been skillfully used by the poet to evoke the right imagery to suit his meaning.