Sad Steps

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Poem Analysis

Background

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Aging and Disappointment

Despite the consolatory final line, the dominant topics of the poem is the changed perspective the speaker has on life compared with when he was younger. He is aging and cannot fully disguise his disappointment at his loss of his youth. There is a finality in his realization that “it can’t come again” (Line 17); the disappointment and resignation he feels about this indisputable fact cannot be missed. The first line of the poem sets the tone. The speaker sounds like a rather old and impotent figure, “groping back to bed” (Line 1), after visiting the bathroom. He appears not only enfeebled—even though he is groping, presumably, because he has not thought it necessary to switch on the light—but also not in the best of moods. This is suggested by the use of the vulgar word “piss,” which offers a hint that the view of life he is going to present is not going to be elevated, but more down to earth without adornment.

The mockery he makes of the old-fashioned sonneteers with their high-flown language about the moon also suggests someone who is discontent, seeing nothing interesting or valid in poetic expressions of the moon's beauty. It is not that he does not respond to the sight of the moon; he does so in a completely separate way, suggestive of a major reassessment or restructuring of how he responds to life. The thought of those sonneteers and the way they wrote of the moon just makes him laugh, though one imagines so in a rueful kind of way, as if he is wondering how he could ever have taken such things seriously. For the speaker, it seems that life has fewer possibilities now, and perhaps he feels more of a sense of isolation in an indifferent universe offering him little inspiration as he takes his “sad steps” toward death.

Realism vs. Romanticism

As the speaker observes the night sky and draws conclusions about life that the sight of the moon produces in him, he likely believes he is processing the information in a rational and realistic manner. He is no longer willing nor able to indulge in the kind of emotional romanticism he might have done earlier in his life. The contrast between youth and middle age mirrors the contrast between realism and romanticism. Perhaps the adjective “cleanliness” (Line 3) in the first tercet is a sign of his intention. It is an unusual word to be applied to the moon and quite different from the extravagant expressions he ironically invokes in Stanza 4. Because of his changed perspective, the speaker can no longer take seriously those romantic descriptions; he finds them “laughable” (Line 6) and “preposterous” (Line 10). (In Line 10, “high and preposterous and separate,” the word preposterous refers not to the moon but to the nonrealistic descriptions applied to it.) The speaker shows himself to be an acute and accurate observer of the scene that greets him as he parts the curtains: The clouds scud across the “wind-picked sky" (Line 5)—an original variation on the common expression, "the wind picked up." The simile about the clouds “that blow loosely as cannon-smoke” (Line 8) is realistically observed, as is the “Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below” (Line 9). It is this realistic perspective that enables the speaker to reach his more sober and down-to-earth conclusion, free from youthful aspirations, but perhaps wiser in its perception of reality.

Seeing the Wider Picture

If a rather sober realism is the dominant tone of most of the poem, its conclusion offers a more optimistic perspective. The speaker’s observation that although his own youth has gone, youth still exists “for others undiminished somewhere” (Line 18) shows that he is now taking a wider view of life rather than merely bemoaning his own. His concluding perspective might be described as an understanding that life goes on. Seeing the wider picture involves moving from the personal to the impersonal, from the individual to the general. The speaker likely has in mind—although he does not explicitly state it—that life is a constant cycle from birth, to youth and manhood, middle age, then old age, and death. The cycle repeats itself and can always be found “somewhere” (Line 18) at any one of those stages. One person may be in the prime of life while another is on the decline.

In other words, the moon shines its light on all alike, although those who receive it are at any one moment in various stages of life and may thus rather differently interpret it. Perhaps for the speaker, who is in need of a comforting thought, this wider perspective allows him to achieve a moment of calmness, wisdom, and acceptance. He has for this moment put his own pessimism and regret aside in favor of a more general truth: If he cannot enjoy all he did when he was younger, others are more fortunate—for now.