The Ball Poem

The Ball Poem: analysis

Introduction

The poem begins with a small event. A boy's ball bounces down a street and into a harbour. The speaker watches him stand frozen with grief. He decides that a dime or a new ball would be worthless, because the boy is learning something no money can undo.

The boy is meeting loss for the first time, "The epistemology of loss". He must learn how to stand up while knowing it. In the closing lines the speaker's view widens until he identifies with the ball, the boy and everything that moves him. The poem ends on a puzzling line: "I am not a little boy."

Summary

The poem is a single block of 25 lines. It opens with a question about what the boy who has lost his ball is to do now. The speaker saw the ball go "Merrily bouncing" down the street and over into the water.

The speaker says there is no use telling the boy there are other balls. An "ultimate shaking grief" holds him still. He stands rigid and trembling, staring down "All his young days" into the harbour where the ball went.

The speaker says he will not intrude. A dime or another ball would be worthless. The boy now senses "first responsibility" in a world of possessions. The speaker addresses him as "little boy". He says that balls will always be lost, that "no one buys a ball back" and that "Money is external".

Behind his desperate eyes, the boy is learning "The epistemology of loss". He is learning how to stand up again. He stands knowing what every man must one day know, and most know many days.

Light gradually returns to the street, a whistle blows, and the ball is out of sight. The speaker says that soon part of him will explore the deep, dark floor of the harbour. He says, "I am everywhere", and that his mind and heart move with all that move him. This is so whether under the water or whistling. The last words are "I am not a little boy."

Themes and meaning

First loss is the poem's centre. The ball is a cheap toy, yet its loss brings "An ultimate shaking grief". The poem takes the child's grief seriously. It suggests this is the moment he first learns that things can be gone for good. He stares down "All his young days", as if his whole childhood went with the ball.

Loss as knowledge is a second theme. The phrase "The epistemology of loss" uses a philosopher's word for the theory of knowledge. The boy is learning not just to feel loss but to know it as a condition of life. Lines 17 and 18 widen the lesson to everyone. It is something "every man must one day know", and that most know "many days".

The limits of money and possessions form a third theme. The speaker refuses to offer "A dime, another ball". He states that "no one buys a ball back" and that "Money is external". What is lost is not the object but the boy's first innocence. That cannot be replaced.

The watcher's identification with the boy is the fourth theme. The speaker begins outside the scene, saying "I would not intrude on him". By the end he imagines part of himself on the harbour floor and says "I am everywhere". The last line, "I am not a little boy", is open to several readings. It can mark the speaker's distance from the boy, or it can be read as a protest that betrays how much he still is that boy.

Tone

The opening is agitated. The stammered question "What, what is he to do?" sounds like the speaker sharing the boy's panic. The double "Merrily" in lines 3 and 4 tracks the ball's carefree flight just before the drop.

The middle of the poem turns grave and almost lecturing. Statements like "Money is external" are flat and absolute. The speaker speaks to the boy as "little boy", gently but without false comfort.

The last lines grow strange and intense. The grammar loosens, with clauses running on without full stops. The speaker moves from watching to feeling, saying "I suffer and move". The final line is abrupt. Its tone can be heard as firm, defensive or quietly sad, and the poem does not settle which.

Form and structure

The poem is a single stanza of 25 lines. It does not rhyme. Lines run from 9 to 13 syllables, most near ten. The metre is a loose blank verse, based on iambic pentameter but often stretched or broken.

The syntax is unusual, and sentences start and stop in the middle of lines, as in "His ball went. I would not intrude on him". Some sentences near the end are left without closing punctuation. The broken grammar matches the speaker's shaken state. Dashes and spaced dots mark sudden shifts of attention.

Poetic devices

Repetition line 2

What, what is he to do? The stammered word catches the speaker's agitation. It sounds like a mind thrown off balance by the loss.

Repetition line 4

Merrily over "Merrily" repeats from line 3. Its cheerfulness turns cruel as the ball drops into the water.

Hyperbole line 6

An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy A lost ball causes "ultimate" grief. The strong word shows the loss as the child feels it, not as an adult would weigh it.

Metaphor line 8

All his young days into the harbour The boy seems to stare at his whole childhood going under. The ball comes to stand for something larger.

Diction line 16

The epistemology of loss A philosophical term is applied to a child's grief. The clash of registers marks this as a lesson in knowledge, not only feeling.

Aphorism line 14

And no one buys a ball back. The plain saying states the lesson flatly. Money cannot reverse a real loss.

Repetition line 18

how to stand up The phrase repeats from line 16. Learning to stand up again becomes the heart of the boy's lesson.

Alliteration line 23

I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move The repeated m sounds bind suffering and movement. The line enacts the speaker's emotional motion.

Ambiguity line 25

I am not a little boy. The last line can deny or confess identity with the boy. Its flatness leaves the speaker's meaning open.

Words worth knowing

epistemology

The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge and how we know. Here, learning what loss is.

fixes

Holds fast or freezes in place, as grief makes the boy stand rigid.

external

Outside, belonging to the surface of things. Money cannot reach the inner loss.

harbour

Sheltered water for ships. The spelling is the British form.

What readers have said

• Fred reads the ball as a metaphor for childhood, lost in a harbour that may stand for memory, so the poem is about how fast youth passes. fred, 2004
• Emily found the poem laughable in her English class, an attempt to make a trivial event seem meaningful. Emily, 2005
• Sean answers that the poem shows a loss that stays with a person for life, and that one must accept it in order to keep getting up. sean, 2005
• Ben, a high-school reader, thinks the most interesting point is that the speaker is the boy, looking back on his own past. Ben, 2010
• Sitanshu reads it as about the loss of childhood and how to recover from feelings of loss. SITANSHU, 2011