Sad Steps

“Sad Steps” is a lyric poem by English poet Philip Larkin. It was written in 1968 and published in Larkin’s collection, High Windows, in 1974. At that time, Larkin was England’s best-known and most-read living poet. On one level, the poem is an expression of regret: The speaker is no longer young and as he looks out of his window at the moon at night, he no longer associates it with the ideal of love or any other romantic notion. The disappointment he feels—although it is tempered in the final line—is typical of Larkin’s poetry, which often expresses the pessimistic view that life consists more of boredom, unhappiness, and regret than any feelings of joy and purpose. “Sad Steps” is also typical of Larkin’s work in that he employs the traditional elements of rhyme and meter rather than writing in free verse as many of his contemporaries did.

Poet Biography

England’s most popular poet of the second half of the 20th century, Philip Larkin was born on August 9, 1922, in Coventry, Warwickshire, in the English Midlands to Sydney—the Coventry city treasurer—and Eva Larkin. Philip had a sister, Catherine, who was 10 years his senior. Encouraged by his father, young Larkin read English poetry and novels and began writing his own poetry, as well as plays and short stories. He also began what would become a lifelong interest in jazz. In 1940, during World War II, he entered St. John’s College, Oxford, and graduated with a degree in English in 1943. He was exempt from military service because of poor eyesight. After graduation, he became librarian of a small public library in Wellington, Shropshire. He remained a librarian all his life.

Larkin’s first collection of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945. He had not yet found his distinctive poetic voice, and these poems were much influenced by some of the leading poets of the day: W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, and Dylan Thomas. One year later, Larkin became assistant librarian at University College, Leicester, and his novel, Jill, was published. A second novel, A Girl in Winter, followed in 1947. At that stage in his life, Larkin regarded himself more as a novelist than a poet, although he never finished another novel.

Larkin assumed his third job as a librarian in 1950, when he became a sub-librarian at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1951, he arranged for his collection of 20 poems, XX Poems, to be privately printed at his own expense. The book received almost no acknowledgement from the literary world.

In 1955, Larkin found success with the publication of The Less Deceived, which was selected as a book of the year by the Times Literary Supplement. In the same year, he started a position as librarian of the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, in northeastern England where he remained for the rest of his life.

In 1961, Larkin put his enthusiasm and knowledge of jazz to productive use when he began reviewing jazz for the Daily Telegraph, which he continued to do until 1971. In 1964, his poetry collection The Whitsun Weddings was published. It fully established Larkin’s name among the general public, appealing not only to people who often read poetry but also to those who rarely did. People recognized that there was something quintessentially British about Larkin’s work—a kind of resigned pessimism that also seemed to capture the national mood of the 1950s and 60s. Larkin’s success continued the following year when he was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the Arts.

In 1973, Larkin edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. His choice of poems reflected his own tastes. He championed the poetry of Thomas Hardy by including 27 Hardy poems (and only nine by T. S. Eliot). Summarily, 207 poets were represented. The collection proved controversial, with ordinary lovers of poetry appearing to enjoy it more than the academic reviewers.

In 1974, the publication of another volume of poetry, High Windows, cemented Larkin’s popularity as a poet; this collection included “Sad Steps.” Larkin continued to write and publish a few poems in the mid- and late-1970s (including the famous “Aubade”), but High Windows was his last major publication. In 1984, he declined an invitation to become Poet Laureate following the death of John Betjeman.

Larkin died of cancer on December 2, 1985, in Hull, at the age of 63. His Collected Poems was published in 1988.

Poem Text

Larkin, Philip. “Sad Steps.” 1968. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The first-person speaker, a middle-aged man, makes his way back to bed after going to the bathroom at night. He pulls the curtains aside and looks out at the night scene. He sees the clouds moving across the sky and the moon. Stanza 2 explains that it is four o’clock in the morning. The speaker looks down at the gardens below and at the expansive sky. There is wind, too.

Something about the sight of the moon, which seems to quickly move through the wispy clouds to stand alone, strikes the speaker as amusing. Poets and lovers often see the moon as a romantic symbol, but the speaker here, in Stanza 4, thinks that associating the moon with any such notion is ridiculous. Instead, in Stanzas 5 and 6, he states that the moon—described not in romantic terms but in words suggesting a kind of austere remoteness—reminds him of what it was like to be young and the fact that his youth will never come again. In the last line, he consoles himself by stating that even if he cannot be young again, there are young people elsewhere who are able to enjoy what their youth may bring.