The schoolchildren love to watch the flaming forge—the hearth at which the blacksmith heats his metals. The heat from the forge makes the metals softer and more ductile, thereby enabling easy processing of the material. The children like to watch the blacksmith at work through his open door; they not only love to watch the flaming forge, but also love to listen to the roars from the bellows and to run after and catch the sparks that fly from the hearth. This information on what the schoolchildren love to do at the blacksmith’s workshop is found in the fourth stanza of the eight-stanza poem.

The poem generally talks about the life of a hardworking blacksmith, who is grieving for his dead wife. The life of the blacksmith as detailed in the poem is a representation of the life of a common man; the poem exemplifies the struggles that people go through in their day-to-day lives and how they overcome these challenges. Like the blacksmith, we “toil, rejoice, and sorrow”; we take pleasure in the simple gifts of life: the flames from a smith’s hearth, the sound of his bellows, the voice of a singing child, the preaching and praying in a church, and the fruits of our labor.