In this line, the speaker is describing how the lower-class boys in his neighborhood talked and dressed. They were the "rough" boys his parents wanted to keep him away from.

The speaker says the boys "threw words like stones." This is a simile, a comparison that uses the words like or as. This means that the rougher boys said or shouted out ("threw" as if from a distance) insults at him that hurt him, just as if they had flung stones at him. This shows that the other, poorer boys saw the speaker as different and resented him.

The line also says that these boys "wore torn clothes." This is the device of visual imagery because it puts a picture in the reader's mind of what the rough boys looked like. The speaker will go on in the next line to use even more imagery to describe the boys' pants as "rags" through which their thighs showed. Without saying so, the speaker implies that his own clothes are whole and nice, which may be one reason the rough boys envy and insult him.

Spender also uses simple words of one syllable in this line. He creates a sense of rhythm through assonance, which is when similar vowel sounds are repeated in close proximity, as in the or sound in "words" and "torn" and the long o sound in "stones" and "clothes." This device links together the idea that the boys' harsh words, like "stones," are connected to their poverty—their torn clothes.

The lines are significant because they show how visible the class divide was in England in Spender's childhood, probably describing the period at the end of or shortly after World War I (Spender was born in 1909).