Told in the third person, the poem follows a young woman worn down by people who never stop judging her. At first she loses the simple joy she had as a child and starts squinting and straining toward a goal that can't be reached. The "dozens of eyes" that keep returning suggest a crowd of critics, always watching, always expecting more than she can give. They break her dreams, pull her down, and drag her through the dirt.
The mood is heavy and discouraging for most of the poem, and the repeated "She no longer" makes her loss of hope feel like a slow slide. In the middle she even asks why she should care when they've made sure she'll fail. Then the last stanza turns. She stops letting them hold her down, and sees they want to make her just like them. The final line is quiet but hopeful: it "wasn't long" before she stood again. The ending suggests that recognizing what they were doing was the first step to getting free.