Central Idea and Summary

The central idea of the poem is that childhood does not end on a fixed day; it fades gradually as a child begins to reason, to see the world honestly, and to think independently. The poet mourns the loss of his innocent, trusting childhood and searches, without success, for the exact moment it disappeared.

Summary

The speaker keeps asking himself when his childhood went away. He wonders whether it left the day he stopped being eleven, when he first understood — through reason rather than belief — that Heaven and Hell were not places one could find on a map, and so perhaps did not exist as he had once imagined. He then wonders whether it went the day he realised that adults are not all they seem to be: they spoke of love and preached about love, yet did not always behave lovingly. Next he wonders whether childhood ended when he discovered that his mind was truly his own, able to produce thoughts that belonged to him alone and to no one else. …