Winding Stair

The winding stair symbolizes unnecessary complexity. A spiral staircase turns around many times before reaching its destination, requiring the person climbing it to walk much more than they otherwise would. Similarly, the speaker argues, poetry often turns the reader around and around before arriving at its point.

The Natural World

The natural world is a symbol for romantic poetry. The poem uses several allusions to the kinds of descriptions of nature commonly found in romantic or pastoral poetry in lines 6-9. The speaker gently mocks these descriptions, arguing that they are unnecessary to express the truth.

Shepherds

Shepherds symbolize ordinary people. In early modern England, shepherding was a major industry for the rural working class. Shepherds thus came to be a symbol of rural, pastoral life, heavily connected to the land and to nature and without the artifice of city living.