Sad Steps

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.