Readers new to Larkin may be startled by the vulgarity of the word “piss” in the first line of “Sad Steps,” but Larkin often used colloquial or vulgar expressions in his poetry. He also used the word “fuck,” which had more power to shock when he included it in two poems in High Windows in 1974 than it does in 2022. In terms of words that express bodily functions, the poem “A Study of Reading Habits” might be thought of in the same context as “Sad Steps.” Both poems contrast youth with middle age, to the disadvantage of the latter. In “A Study of Reading Habits,” the speaker tells of how he loved reading when he was young, but now he is older (Larkin was in his late thirties when he wrote it in 1960) books—like the moon in “Sad Steps”—no longer give him the same thrill. The poem ends, “Books are a load of crap.”

This kind of change for the worse in middle age is quite typical of Larkin’s poetry. If disillusionment is too strong a word—to be disillusioned about the possibility of leading a full and happy life one has to have believed in it in the first place—many of his poems express sadness, disappointment, pessimism, loneliness, or other negative emotions.