The two most powerful lines in the poem are not consecutive. One comes at the end of the seventh stanza: "But I’ve no spade to follow men like them." The other is the final line of the poem: "I’ll dig with it." The theme of the poem is that even though your ancestors may have had different gifts and different passions than you, they can nevertheless inspire you to excel at your own gifts and passions. In the poem, the speaker's father and grandfather were gifted farmers, and they seemed to get great personal satisfaction from the effort and results of their manual labor. The poem uses both symbols and analogy to carry out its theme. The spade symbolizes the work that the speaker's forefathers knew so well, namely "digging." The pen symbolizes the poet's craft of writing. The speaker draws an analogy, saying that he doesn't have a spade, but he does have a pen. He can get as much satisfaction and perform as much meaningful work as a writer as his grandfather and father did from digging. To apply the theme to your life, think of something one of your ancestors really loved to do and was good at but that you don't like to do or aren't good at. Then think of something you do well. Write about how you can gain inspiration for your passions and the things you are good at doing by considering how well your ancestors performed their tasks and what joy they gained from doing so.
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