This poem is an original by Shel Silverstein.  I think in this poem the poet is trying to say that life will have to end some day and during the way you will encounter many difficulties and successes.  He probably is saying this to younger children in elementary school entering adulthood.  Shel thinks this poem is important since it encourages kids to do their best.  I think the poem is important since of the figurative language and the personification identifying the many faults and successes in a person’s life.  I know a lot about Shel Silverstein and have a book of his poetry.  He is a poet who is fixed on younger children.  I can assume that he is dead and he was a very bright poet who used his imagination to personify real objects in life.  I think of a life chain when I read the title.  Since a sidewalk ends, that would mean your life ends.  It could also be saying that you have reached the ultimate success and there is no forward such as a senior citizen.  I am looking at a poem made for children since of the author.  I already know who Shel is and was positive it was a children’s poem.  This poem does not have a sequenced rhyme scheme as the first stanza is a b c c c d and the second is a b c c d e.  This poem does not need a rhyme scheme necessarily since it is telling a personified story about life.  Poems with rhyme scheme obviously rhyme to make the poem more enjoyable to read about.  The tone of the poem is sad since I knew what it meant when he said a place where the sidewalk ends, such as heaven to be personified.  He uses words such as burns, dark, smoke, black, pits, slow.  Without these words, the poem would be very happy but the words all are sad.  The language being used as before is serious since it could be talking about life and death.  For children, it could be talking of going into adulthood.  The language will reinforce the tone also with many describing words.  There are many examples of figurative language in this poem.  An example of personification (using objects with human characteristics) would be the sun burns crimson bright, moon-bird cool in peppermint wind, smoke blows black.  A possible example of a metaphor (is) could be walk is measured and slow since a walk cannot be measured.  There is also some alliteration such as we’ll walk with a walk.  There is no definite rhyme scheme or any similes.  I chose this poem since of the author.  I have already read many of his other poems when I was young but never really read this one.  Just to get the feel for it, I did my project on this poem by Shel Silverstein.  This poem does have a connection to my life as I am reaching adulthood.  It is telling me that there will be many failures and successes that I must reach to get to the place where the sidewalk ends.  It says the journey is slow but we know how to make decisions along the way.  In all, I enjoyed reading this poem since of its figurative language and the author.  Even though it is short, it still had meaning in it so that the author could express his ideas of thought to the audience.  He also visually described the poem to the audience.  When someone reads it they could be visualizing a city or just a sidewalk to the end.  This poem was a great read and I enjoyed presenting it.