Sara Teasdale turns New Year’s Eve on Broadway into a hollow, noisy ritual that leaves everyone worn out. The night is personified as shabby and deluded, thinking she is gay while the patient silence is repeatedly driven away by crude songs and shouts. As the revelers finally stumble home—drunk, pitiful, clutching cheap trinkets and speaking thickly—sleep arrives like forgiveness. The speaker watches with a mix of pity and disgust, and the poem ends on a striking image: dawn rises like a young man slipping out of a brothel, dizzy and sick. The mood is bleary, disillusioned, and quietly judgmental, treating the city’s celebration as empty glitter that curdles into shame by morning.
New Year's Dawn--Broadway — Summary
When the horns wear thin And the noise, like a garment outworn, Falls from the night, The tattered and shivering night, That thinks she is gay; When the patient silence comes back, And retires, And returns, Rebuffed by a ribald song, Wounded by vehement cries, Fleeing again to the stars-- Ashamed of her sister the night; Oh, then they steal home, The blinded, the pitiful ones With their gew-gaws still in their hands, Reeling with odorous breath And thick, coarse words on their tongues. They get them to bed, somehow, And sleep the forgiving, Comes thru the scattering tumult And closes their eyes. The stars sink down ashamed And the dawn awakes, Like a youth who steals from a brothel, Dizzy and sick.