Boys line up for a panoramic school photograph, arranged by height like organ pipes. The camera slowly sweeps across them, and the shortest boys, once it has passed, sneak around behind the group to appear a second time at the far end. It looks like a playful trick, a bit of mischief to beat the machine.
The last four lines change the tone. The speaker points out that the boys at the two ends are not really the same, even though they look it. Each has "new doses of cunning, pride and fear." The closing rhyming pairs, "smirks" and "stares," "lurks" and "dares," set the two sides against each other, one sly and one bold.
The speaker seems quietly amused at first, then thoughtful and a little uneasy. The mood moves from lighthearted to something more watchful, as if the poem suggests that a single moment in time can hide how much people change, even within a few seconds.