The spade, or shovel, an instrument typically used for digging, is one of the central symbols of Heaney’s “Digging.” The word “spade” appears three times in the poem, and its placement is precise. Essentially, the “spade” slices the poem into three sections. The first “spade” appears in the second stanza, the second follows in the couplet that marks the middle of the poem: “By God, the old man could handle a spade. / Just like his old man” (Lines 15-16), and the third closes the poem at the end of the penultimate stanza. The spade functions as the perpetrator of the poem’s main action, digging through time and memory to make a dramatic comparison between past and present, spades and pens.

The spade is a tool that gives weight and importance to its bearers, and the speaker is fascinated by the strength with which his father and grandfather wield it. At multiple points in the poem, the action of digging, figuratively and literally, is indicated by the word “down.” In the second stanza, upon hearing his father’s shovel, the speaker states, “I look down” (Line 5). Line 5 ends without punctuation, an indication that the speaker moves into the memory, or rather, “digs” into the memory without pause.