In the final stanza, the speaker describes hearing “the ghost-clink of milk bottle / on the rough threshold” (Lines 17-18). While this moment describes a literal doorway, the word “threshold” also has rich symbolic connotations, particularly in Irish culture. Sacred places are often thought to be “thresholds” between worlds, and in-between times such as twilight or the hinge between one season and the next are often referred to as “threshold times”. Adolescence, likewise, is a “threshold age”. In this moment, the speaker stands at the threshold of one state of being and another, both as a boy turning into a man and as an innocent absorbing new understanding of the world.