The poem builds a string of comparisons for the year's end, and almost every one is about emptiness or failure. A counterfeit head blesses no one. A hand has run out of hands. A devil can't touch anything, and the god on offer is a god of poverty. Each image describes power that looks real but can't do anything: a blessing that isn't one, a gesture with nothing behind it, a threat without force.
The final stanza gets smaller and harder. "Spare measle" and "ticking tin" suggest something thin and cheap, and "ticking" may point to a clock or to the sound of metal cooling or rattling. Judging by the title, the old year is hurrying off, and it leaves behind no grandeur, only scraps.
The speaker sounds tired and a little wry rather than openly sad. The mood is bare and quietly bleak, with the year's ending felt as a fading rather than a dramatic close.