On a stormy New Year’s morning, the speaker comes across a figure in the woods, bent almost double over a rake. At first, the shape is so strange it barely looks human — more like a tripod, or a wheelbarrow resembling a pig. Once he recognizes the old man, his mind jumps to the games of bending boys, leapfrog and high-cockalorum, a memory of youth against age. They exchange a polite “Happy New Year,” but the old man’s murmured reply carries an odd, weary frankness: “may it come fastish, too.” The speaker strides on. The poem evokes a brief, half-absurd encounter — raw weather, a twisted body, a stark wish for time’s hurry. The mood is wintry, lonely, and touched by a quiet unease at the passing of life.
The New Year — Summary
HE was the one man I met up in the woods That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight, Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much Of the strange tripod was a man. His body, Bowed horizontal, was supported equally By legs at one end, by a rake at the other: Thus he rested, far less like a man than His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig. But when I saw it was an old man bent, At the same moment came into my mind The games at which boys bend thus, High- Cockalorum, Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound Of footsteps he began to straighten himself; His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's; He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year," And with his head cast upward sideways Muttered-- So far as I could hear through the trees' roar-- "Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too," While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.