The Passing of the Year Sadness Quotes

This is a little bit of a downer, huh?  Check out all the negative words: "sober…sadly…blame…little praise."  Sounds like someone's been having a bad time.  We're not sure what's up with the speaker here, and he never really tells us, but it seems like looking back on the year is bumming him out.  We can kind of relate to this.  You know that feeling, when you think about all the crummy stuff that happens in the world and it's sort of hard to feel good about things?  Maybe that's all that's going on here, since by the end of the poem it's pretty clear that our speaker isn't a super-depressed guy.

More glum stuff.  It seems like the "Old Year" is bummed out, too.  Now, we get that he's old and worn out, but that doesn't have to mean sad, too, right?  Even if he was old and slow, he could feel "content" or "cheerful" as well.  We think this is all part of the slightly downbeat feel of this poem.  It's not like that all the time, but we think a lot of it has a kind of blue feeling.

Sorry to keep pointing this out, but these folks really don't seem all that happy.  We don't know what happened to this poor girl, but she's clearly going through it.  In a way, though, you have to respect Service for acknowledging how painful and difficult life can be.  The poem isn't exactly grim, but it does really take a clear, honest look at the rough side of things.  Instead of sounding like something you'd read on a Happy New Year greeting card, this poem recognizes that in every life and every year, there's a lot of pain.  Maybe, in a way, reading about it in a poem can make it better.

We sort of like the way that the speaker goes after this lonely, frightened guy and pulls him out into the light a little.  Even with all the sadness, there's something kind of sweet about this.  Basically, the speaker is pausing to think of those around him and to share in their emotions, whether they are beautiful and happy or ugly and sad.  That's kind of a cool thing to do on New Year's Eve, to imagine what life is like and has been like for other people in the world.  Even though this guy may have done bad things and might feel terrible, the speaker doesn't condemn him or try to make him feel worse.

Here's just one last sad quote as a kicker.  Line for line and pound for pound, the sad stuff really does seem to outweigh the happier material.  In the end, we can't tell you exactly why that is.  Still, it seems pretty clear that thinking about sadness and dealing with its consequences is a big part of this poem.