Sad Steps

"Sad Steps" employs a variety of language, from the colloquial and vulgar “piss” (Line 1) to the more elevated poetic diction describing how the moon has often been regarded in the past by those of a poetic or romantic nature. The poem moves to the more spare, practical, and down-to-earth language in the final two stanzas.

The first line suggests that the speaker is an older or at least middle-aged man who can no longer sleep through the night without at least one excursion to the bathroom. He gropes his way back to bed likely because he has not switched on the light; he pulls the curtains back so a little bit of light can enter. He is rather captivated by the scene he sees: The clouds quickly scud by, so there is obviously a breeze. He looks down at the “wedge-shadowed gardens” (Line 3) which suggests a middle-class area in which people’s gardens are laid out in distinct lots, perhaps with hedges to separate them, giving them a wedge-like appearance.

The speaker does not just quietly contemplate the scene, however. It conveys something to him he regards as amusing. This is in connection with the moon—the dominant element he sees and on which he reflects from his bedroom window. After a naturalistic description of the effect of moonlight on the roofs of the houses (“Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below” [Line 9]), he devotes Stanza 4 to calling up various fanciful ways poets and writers have described the moon and then debunking them. The speaker regards such descriptions as “preposterous” (Line 10) and thoroughly outdated. The moon, for example, is not a “Lozenge of love!” (Line 11); that is, it is not like some kind of pill that when swallowed can supply comforting and romantic feelings. It is also not a “Medallion of art!” (Line 11). These descriptions belong to a bygone age. The “wolves of memory!” (Line 12) likely refers to folklore about werewolves. It might also allude to a fanciful but long held notion that wolves howl at the moon. (Experts say that this is not true; wolves do not howl at the moon—they howl to communicate with one another.)

Larkin even invents his own word, “Immensements!” (Line 12), about these expressions that have been created to make the moon significant in ways that he believes are no longer of any value. This debunking can also be seen in the title of the poem, “Sad Steps,” which is an ironic allusion to a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney—a late 16th-century Elizabethan poet—the first line of which is “With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies.” The speaker in that sonnet is an unhappy lover who thinks the moon is sympathetic to his plight. In contrast, there is nothing sad about anything the moon does in Larkin’s “Sad Steps.” The speaker is more interested in seeing the moon just as the moon: a celestial object that conveys something very different from what it might have been associated with in the past.

After the speaker ridicules the flowery language of the past, the speaker attempts something of a reset in Stanza 5, using what he regards as more appropriate words, although there remains a certain awe in how he contemplates it. The moon is described as possessing “hardness” and “brightness” (Line 14) (so much for any romantic notion of a soft moonlight glow). As the moon hangs alone in the night sky, the speaker observes what he characterizes as the “plain / Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare” (Lines 14-15). This moon has a certain majesty about it, but it is certainly not beaming down sympathy to human lovers, as Sidney’s sonnet would have it. Indeed, it sends a bit of a chill through the speaker (“One shivers slightly” [Line 13]) as he realizes what the moon now signifies for him, which he reveals in the final stanza. The description’s emphasis is on distance and the impersonal. The moon merely stares down, neither benevolent nor hostile—just indifferent.

In the final stanza, the speaker reveals what this sight of the moon at 4 a.m. means to him now. It personally affects him in both a negative and a positive sense. First, it reminds him of what it was like to be young, when presumably he was not so disenchanted with a more romantic or expansive view of life. Being young, however, was not unalloyed bliss, since the speaker characterizes it as a mixture of “strength and pain” (Line 16); he nonetheless regards youth in a positive light. His next thought conveys the regretful notion that his youth has gone and can never return. This confirms that the titular “sad steps” are not those of the moon (unlike Sidney’s sonnet), but of the speaker himself, who is now middle-aged and fumbles his way to and from the bathroom at night. The sad steps are also metaphorically the human journey from youth to middle age.

The final line, however, offers a consolation or positive affirmation. The speaker states that although his own youth will never return, people elsewhere are still enjoying theirs. The tone is matter of fact and hardly exciting, but the statement does pull the speaker from his self-absorption. The calm, selfless, and undeniably correct thought may or may not provide long-term satisfaction for the speaker as his sad steps through life continue.