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A
Railway Poems |
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RAILWAY BRITAIN |
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The
Journey
By running up the staircase once again For some dear trifle almost left behind. At that last moment the unwary mind Forgets the solemn tick of station-time; That muddy lane the feet must climb— The bridge—the ticket—the signal down— Train just emerging beyond the town: The great blue engine panting as it takes The final curve, and grinding on its brakes Up to the platform-edge….The little doors Swing open, while the burly porter roars. The tight compartment fills: our careful eyes Go to explore each other’s destinies. A lull. The station-master waves. The train Gathers, and grips, and takes the rails again, Moves to the shining open land, and soon Begins to tittle-tattle a tame tattoon. Dear gentle monsters, and we ride Pleasantly seated—so we sink Into a torpor on the brink Of thought, or read our books, and understand Half them and half the backward-gliding land: (Trees in a dance all twirling round; Large rivers flowing with no sound; The scattered images of town and field, Shining flowers half concealed.) And, having settled to and equal rate, They swing the curve and straighten to the straight, Curtail their stride and gather up their joints, Snort, dwindle their steam for the noisy points, Leap them in safety, and, the other side, Loop again to and even stride. Like an old ballad, or an endless song, It drones and wimbles its unwearied croon— Croons, drones, and mumbles all the afternoon. Wreathes in great smoke between the earth and sky, It hurtles through them, and you think it must Halt—but it shrieks and sputters them with dust, Cracks like a bullet through their big affairs, Rushes the station-bridge, and disappears Out to the suburb, laying bare Each garden trimmed with pitiful care; Children are caught at idle play, Held a moment, and thrown away. Nearly everyone looks round. Some dignifies inhabitant is found Right in the middle of the commonplace— Buttoning his trousers, or washing his face. In any train I must remember it. The way it smashes through the air; its great Petulant majesty and terrible rate: Driving the ground before it, with those round Feet pounding, eating, covering the ground; The piston using up the white steam so The cutting, the embankment; how it takes the tunnels, and the clatter that it makes; So careful of the train and of the track, Guiding us out, or helping us go back; Breasting its destination: at the close Yawning, and slowly dropping to a doze. This journey long, and trundled with the train, Now to our separate purposes must rise, Becoming decent strangers once again. The little chamber we have made our home In which we so conveniently abode, The complicated journey we have come, Must be an unremembered episode. Our common purpose made us all like friends. How suddenly it ends! A nod, a murmur, or a little smile, Or often nothing, and away we file. I hate to leave you, comrades. I will stay To watch you drift apart and pass away. It seems impossible to go and meet All those strange eyes of people in the street. But, like some proud unconsious god, the train Gathers us up and scatters us again. A poem written by:
HAROLD MONRO From a Railway Carriage Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches, And charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows the horses and cattle: All of the sights of the hill and the plain Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by. All by himself and gathering brambles; Here is a tramp who stands and grazes; And there is a green for stringing daisies! Here is a cart run away in the road Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone for ever! A
poem written by:
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON In the Train
I am in a long train gliding through Gliding past green fields and gentle grey willows, Past huge dark elms and meadows full of buttercups, And old farms dreaming among mossy apple trees. Now we are in a dingy
town of small
ugly houses
And tin advertisements of cocoa and Sunlight Soap, Now we are in dreary station built of coffee-coloured wood, Where barmaids in black stand in empty Refreshment Rooms, And shabby old women sit on benches with suitcases. Now we are by sidings
where
coaltrucks lurk disconsolate
Bright skies overarch us with shining cloud palaces, Sunshine flashes on canals, and then the rain comes, Silver rain from grey skies lashing our window panes; Then it is bright again and white smoke is blowing Gaily
over a pale blue sky among the telegraph wires.
Through black, smoky tunnels, over iron viaducts, Past platelayers and signal boxes, factories and warehouses; Afternoon is fading among the tall brick chimney-stacks In the murky Northward, O train, you rush, resolute, invincible, Northward to the night where your banner of flying smoke Will glow in the darkness with burning spark and ruddy flame. Be the train, my life,
see the
shining meadows,
Glance at the quiet farms, the gardens and shady lanes, But do not linger by them, look at the dingy misery Of all those silly towns, see it, hate it and remember it, But never accept it. You must only accept you own road: The strong unchanging steel rails of necessity, The ardent power that drives you towards night and the unknown terminus. A poem written by:
V. DE SOLA PINTO Morning Express Along the wind-swept
platform,
pinched and white,
The travellers stand in pools of wintry light, Offering themselves to morn’s long slanting arrows. The train’s due; porters trundle laden barrows. The train steams in, volleying resplendent clouds Of sun-blown vapour. Hither and about, Scared people hurry, storming the doors in crowds. The officials seem to waken with a shout, Resolved to hoist and plunder; some to the vans Leap; others rumble the milk in gleaming cans. Boys, indolent-eyed, from
baskets
leaning back,
Question each face; a man with a hammer steals Stooping from coach to coach; with clang and clack, Touches and tests, and listens to the wheels. Guard sounds a warning whistle, points to the clock With brandished flag, and on his folded flock Claps the last door: the monster grunts; ‘Enough!’ Tightening his load of links with pant and puff. Under the arch, then forth into blue day; Glide the processional windows on their way, And glimpse the stately folk who sit at ease To view the world like kings taking the seas In prosperous weather: drifting banners tell Their progress to the counties; with them goes The clamour of their journeying; while those Who sped them stand to wave a last farewell. A poem written by:
SIEGFRIED SASSOON The Bridge Here, with one leap,
The bridge that spans the cutting; on its back The load Of the main-road, And under it the railway-track. Into the plains they
sweep,
Into the solitary plains asleep, The flowing lines, the parallel lines of steel— Fringes with their narrow grass, Into the plains they pass, The flowing lines, like arms of mute appeal. A cry
Prolonged across the earth—a call To the remote horizons and the sky; The whole east rushes down them with its light, And the whole west receives them, with its pall Of stars and night— The flowing lines, the parallel lines of steel. And with the fall
Of darkness, see! The red, Bright anger of the signal, where it flares Like a huge eye that stares On some hid danger in the dark ahead. A twang of wire—unseen The signal drops; and now, instead Of a red eye, a green. Out of the silence grows
An iron thunder---grows, and roars, and sweeps, Menacing! The plain Suddenly leaps, Startled, from its repose— Alert and listening. Now, from the gloom Of the soft distance, loom Three lights and, over them, a brush Of tawny flame and flying spark— Three pointed lights that rush, Monstrous, upon the cringing dark. And nearer, nearer rolls
the sound,
Louder the throb and roar of wheels, The shout of speed, the shriek of steam; The sloping bank,
Cut into flashing
squares, gives
back the clank
And grind of metal, while the ground Shudders and the bridge reels— As, with a scream, The train, A rage of smoke, a laugh of fire, A lighted anguish of desire, A dream Of gold and iron, of sound and flight, Tumultuous roars across the night. The train roars past—and
, with a
cry,
Drowned in a flying howl of wind, Half-stifled in the smoke and blind, The plain, Shaken, exultant, unconfined, Rises, flows on, and follows, and sweeps by, Shrieking, to lose itself
in
distance and the sky.
A poem written by:
JOHN REDWOOD ANDERSON The Express After the first powerful
plain
manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station. Without bowing and with restrained unconcern She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside, The gasworks and at last the heavy page Of death, printed by gravestones in the cemetery. Beyond the town there lies the open country Where, gathering speed, shed acquires mystery, The luminous self-possession of shops on ocean. It is now she begins to sing—at first quite low Then loud, and at last with a jazzy madness— The song of her whistle screaming at curves, Of deafening tunnels,
brakes,
innumerable bolts.
And always light, aerial,
underneath
Goes the elate metre of
her wheels.
Steaming through metal landscape on her lines She plunges new eras of wild happiness Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves And parallels clean like the steel of guns. At last, further than Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night Where only a low streamline brightness Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is white. Ah, like a comet through flame she moves entranced Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal.
A poem written by:
STEPHEN SPENDER The Night Mail This is the night mail
crossing the
border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb— The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time. Past cotton grass and
moorland
boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, Snorting noisily as she passes Silent miles of wind-bent grasses. Birds turn their heads as she approaches, Stare from the bushes at her blank-faces coaches. Sheep dogs cannot turn her course, They slumber on with paws across. In the farm she passes no one wakes, But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes. Dawn freshens, the climb
is done.
Down towards Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes, Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen. All In the dark glens, beside the pale-green lochs Men long for news. Letters of thanks,
letters from
banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy, Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or visit relations, And applications for situations And timid lovers’ declarations, And gossip, gossip from all the nations, News circumstantial, news financial, Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in, Letters with faces scrawled in the margin, Letters from uncles, cousins and aunts, Letters to Letters of condolence to Highlands and Notes from overseas to Written on paper of every hue, The pink, the violet, the white and the blue, The chatty, the catty, the boring , adoring, The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring, Clever, stupid, short and long, The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong. Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters, Or a friendly tea beside the band at Asleep in working Asleep in granite They continue their dreams; But shall wake soon and long for letters, And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart, For who can hear and feel himself forgotten?
A poem written by: W.H. Auden Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat
There’s a
whisper down the line at
11:39
When the Night Mail’s ready to depart, Saying ‘Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble? We must find him or the train can’t start.’ All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster’s daughters They are searching high and low, Saying ‘Skimble where is Skimble for unless he’s very nimble Then the Night Mail just can’t go.’ At 11:42 then the signal’s nearly due And the passengers are frantic to a man— Then Skimble will appear and he’ll saunter to the rear: He’s been busy in the luggage van! He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes And the signal goes ‘All Clear!’ And we’re off at last for the northern part Of the Northern Hemisphere! Of the Sleeping Car Express. From the driver and the guards to the bagmen playing cards He will supervise them all, more or less. Down the corridor he paces and examines all the faces Of the travellers in the First and in the Third; He establishes control by a regular patrol And he’d know at once if anything occurred. He will watch you without winking and he sees what you are thinking And it’s certain that he doesn’t approve Of hilarity and riot, so the folk are very quiet When Skimble is about and on the move. You can play no pranks with Skimbleshanks! He’s a Cat that cannot be ignored; So nothing goes wrong on the Northern Mail When Skimbleshanks is aboard. With your name written up on the door. And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet And there’s not a speck of dust on the floor. There is every sort of light—you can make it dark or bright; There’s a handle that you turn to make a breeze. There’s a funny little basin you’re supposed to wash your face in And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze. Then the guard looks in politely and will ask you very brightly ‘Do you like your morning tea weak or strong?’ But Skimble’s just behind him and was ready to remind him, For Skimble won’t let anything go wrong. And when you creep into your cosy berth And pull up the counterpane, You ought to reflect that it’s very nice To know that you won’t be bothered by mice— You can leave all that to the Railway Cat, The Cat of the Railway Train! Every now and then he has a cup of tea With perhaps a drop of Scotch while he’s keeping on the watch, Only stopping here and there to catch a flea. You were fast asleep at That he was walking up and down the station; You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Where he greets the stationmaster with elation. But you saw him at If there’s anything they ought to know about: When you get to Gallowgate there you do not have to wait— For Skimbleshanks will help you to get out! He gives you a wave of his long brown tail Which says: ‘I’ll see you again! You’ll meet without fail on the Midnight Mail The Cat of the Railway Train.’
A poem written by: T.S. ELIOT The Train A green eye—and a red—in
the dark
Thunder—smoke—and a spark. It is there—it is
here—flashed by.
Whither will the wild thing fly? It is rushing, tearing
thro’ the
night,
Rending
her gloom in its flight.
It shatters her silence
with
shrieks.
What is it the wild thing seeks?
Alas! For it hurries away.
Them that are fain to stay. Hurrah! For it carries
home
Lovers and friends that roam.
A poem written by: MARY E. COLERIDGE Adlestrop
The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. No one left and no one came On the bare platform, What I saw Was Adlestrop—only the name And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Then the high cloudlets in the sky.
Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the Birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
A poem written by: EDWARD THOMAS Homecoming to Cornwall: December 1942 A landslide on the line,
the train
diverted
Back up the valley of the red Exe in spate Rich with Meadows, swirling round the wooded bends, The December quality of light on boles of trees, Black and shining out of the gathering dark, The sepia brushwood, against the western skies Filtering the last watercolour light. (Why should the eyes fill with tears, as if One should not look upon the like again? So many eyes have seen that coign of wood, That curve of river, the pencil screen of trees,) I fall asleep; the train feels slowly round The unfamiliar northern edge of It is night and we are entering The sense of excitement wakens me, to see Launceston perched on a shoulder like The young moon white above the moving clouds. The train halts in the valley where monks prayed, Under the castle keep the And Edward the Black Prince visited. We stop At every wayside halt, a
signal-box,
An open waiting shed, a shrub or two, A friendly voice out of the night, a lamp— Egloskerry, Tresmeer and Otterham— And out upon the shaven moonlit moor. The seawind blows from the Atlantic coast, A seabird sails over, whitens in the moon: The little scattered houses crouch for shelter, A few withies about them, a stunted elm Or showl of ash or thorn, a pool that gleams In the strange light upon the downs That look towards Rowtor where King Arthur hunted The Where all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea. In the mind’s eye I see the old great poet Search still for Arthur’s grave in this waste land Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwell. All is bare and silent: no light shows: The white sheep crop on the glimmering pastures; There is the unforgettable smell of the moor, Of the seawind on a hundred nameless herbs, On bracken and gorse, on heather and fern and ivy (the sick man leans upon
the window,
weeping
He knows not why, at his home-coming After many weary months of weakness.) In the moment of breathing in my native land I remember to hate: the thousand indignities, The little humiliations, the small insults From small people, the hidden emnities, The slights that hurt the sensibilities Of a child that, longing for affection, learned To reward envy with contempt, to speak The biting word that freezes sympathy, The instinctive expectation of a blow To pride or self-respect or decency; And as a man to mark the averted gaze of petty shopkeepers on their dunghill pavements; The meanness of the moneyed middle-class, The slow passivity of the workers that know Not their own interest or their enemies. But, most of all, the vast misunderstanding That divides me from my people I lament, The self-willed folly that condemned me long To opening the eyes of fools, the task Of a Tregeagle or a Sisyphus, The million fond stupidities that make A modern electorate. Alone in the night, At the window looking over the moonlit land, Alone with myself I could beat my head against The walls for rage and impotent defeat. Quick! Shut the window. Pull down the blind Over the lovely landscape. Shut out the sight!
A poem written by: SIEGFRIED SASSOON The Runaway Engine
Once there was a little
engine who
was full of discontent.
He didn’t like the work he did or the journey he was sent. And he grumbled to himself as he puffed his way uphill, “I think it’s time I had a change; I really feel quite ill.” “I’ve had enough of
trucks of coal
and nasty smelly fish,
And to have a more important job is the one thing that I wish, And just because I’m little they don’t listen when I speak, But I’ll make them hear me this time if it takes me all week.” So he snorted and he
blew, and he
made a lot of din,
But not the slightest notice did his driver take of him. This so annoyed the engine that with rage he really shook, And then he gave his driver a nasty, horrid look. “I’ll teach him not to
listen,” he
stuttered through his steam.
He stamped his wheels with temper and really made a scene. “ I won’t put up with this,” he said, “another single day! There’s only one thing left to do—I’ll have to run away.” So that night when none
could see
him, he crept out of his shed,
And tired of going uphill went the other way instead. “Now this is rather fun,” he said, and gave a little hop, But he soon found to his horror that he simply couldn’t stop. Faster, faster went his
wheels, his
whistle blew with fright.
He went so fast he left the rails—how he wished that he could stop, But he went right in the water with a simply frightful plop! He lay there and he
gurgled for he
couldn’t even shout,
And he said that he was sorry when they came and pulled him out. And now he whistles gaily as he does his work each day, For he knows he’d rather stay at home than ever run away. A poem written by: ANON
To a Locomotive in Winter
Thee for my recitative,
Thee in driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Thee in thy panoply, they measured dual throbbing and they beat convulsive, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thy ponderous side-bows, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, strutting at thy sides, Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance. Thy great protruding heat-light fixed in front, Thy long pale, floating vapour-pennants, tinged with delicate purple, The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack, Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, Thy train of cars behind, obedient , merrily following, Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering; Type of the modern-emblem of motion and power-pulse of the continent, For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee, With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow, By day thy warming ringing bell to sound its notes, By night thy silent signal lamps to swing. Fierce-throated beauty!
Roll through by chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like and earthquake rousing all, Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills returned, Launched o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies upent and glad and strong.
A poem written by: WATT WHITMAN Seen from the Train
Somewhere between
Crewkerne
And Yeovil it was. On the left of the line Just as the crinkled hills unroll To the plain. A church on a small green knoll— A limestone church, And above the church Cedar boughs stretched like hands that yearn To protect or to bless. The whole
Stood up, antique and
clear
As a cameo, from the vale. I swear It was not a dream. Twice, thrice, had I found it Chancing to look as my train wheeled round it But this time I passed, Though I gazed as I passed All the way down the valley, that knoll was not there, Nor the church, nor the trees it moulded. What came between to
unsight me?…..
But suppose, only suppose there might be A secret look it the landscape’s eye Following you as you hasten by And you have your chance— Two or three chances At most—to hold and interpret it rightly, Or it is gone for aye. There was a time when men
Would have called it a vision said that sin Had blinded me since to a heavenly fact. Well, I have neither invoked nor faked Any church in the air, And little I care Whether or no I shall see it again. But blindly my heart is racked When I think how, not
twice or
thrice,
But year after year in another’s eyes I have caught the look that I missed today Of the church, the knoll, the cedars—a ray Of the faith, too, they stood for, The hope they were food for The love they prayed for, the facts beyond price— And turned my eyes away.
A poem written by: VICTOR MASGRAVE
The Song of the Engine
When you travel on the
railway,
And the line goes up a hill, Just listen to the engine As it pulls you with a will. Though it goes very slowly It sings this little song. “I think I can, I think I can,” And so it goes along. But later on the Journey,
When you’re going down a hill, The train requires no pulling, And the engine’s singing still. If you listen very quietly You will hear this little song, “I thought I could, I thought I could!” And so it speeds along.
A poem written by: CHRISTINE
WEATHERLY
The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay! With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array And your central girders, which seem to the eye To be almost towering to the sky. The greatest wonder of the day, And a great beautification to the River Tay, Most beautiful to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. That has caused the Emperor of Brazil to leave His home far away, incognito in his dress, And view thee ere he passed along en route to Inverness. The longest of the present day That has ever crossed o'er a tidal river stream, Most gigantic to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. Which will cause great rejoicing on the opening day And hundreds of people will come from far way, Also the Queen, most gorgeous to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. And prosperity to Provost Cox, who has given Thirty thousand pounds and upwards away In helping to erect the Bridge of the Tay, Most handsome to be seen, Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. I hope that God will protect all passengers By night and by day, And that no accident will befall them while crossing The Bridge of the Silvery Tay, For that would be most awful to be seen Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. And prosperity to Messrs Bouche and Grothe, The famous engineers of the present day, Who have succeeded in erecting the Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay, Which stands unequalled to be seen Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green. A poem written by:
WILLIAM TOPAZ McGONAGALL The Metropolitan Railway Baker Street Station Buffet
Early Electric! Sit you down and see,
Smoothly from Harrow, passing Preston Road,
And all that day in murky London Wall While
she, in arc-lit Oxford Street adrift, Early
Electric! Maybe even here
Cancer has killed him. Heart is killing her. A poem written by:
SIR JOHN BETJEMIN Pershore Station, or A Liverish Journey First Class The train at Pershore station was waiting that Sunday night Gas light on the platform, in my carriage electric light, Gas light on frosty evergreens, electric on Empire wood, The Victorian world and the present in a moment's neighbourhood. There was no one about but a conscript who was saying good-bye to his love On the windy weedy platform with the sprinkled stars above When sudden the waiting stillness shook with the ancient spells Of an older world than all our worlds in the sound of the Pershore bells. They were ringing them down for Evensong in the lighted abbey near, Sounds which had poured through apple boughs for seven centuries here. And I thought of her left behind me in the Herefordshire hills. I remembered her defencelessness as I made my heart a stone Till she wove her self-protection round and left me on my own. And plunged in a deep self pity I dreamed of another wife And lusted for freckled faces and lived a separate life. One word would have made her love me, one word would have made her turn But the word I never murmured and now I am left to burn. Evesham, Oxford and London. The carriage is new and smart. I am cushioned and soft and heated with a deadweight in my heart. A poem written by:
SIR JOHN BETJEMIN
Great Central Railway: Sheffield Victoria to Banbury Unmitigated England Came swinging down the line That day the February sun Did crisp and crystal shine. Dark red at Kirkby Bentinck stood A steeply gabled farm 'Mid ash trees and a sycamore In charismatic calm. A village street - a manor house - A church - then, tally ho! We pounded through a housing scheme With tellymasts a-row, Where cars of parked executives Did regimented wait Beside administrative blocks Within the factory gate. She waved to us from Hucknall South As we hooted round a bend, From a curtained front-window did The diesel driver's friend. Through cuttings deep to Nottingham Precariously we wound; The swallowing tunnel made the train Seem London's Underground. Above the fields of Leicestershire On arches we were born The thunder of the Quorn; And silver shone the steeples out Above the barren boughs; Colts in a paddock ran from us But not the solid cows; And quite where Rugby Central is Does only Rugby know. We watched the empty platform wait And sadly saw it go. By now the sun of afternoon Showed ridge and furrow shadows And shallow unfamiliar lakes Stood shivering in the meadows. Is Woodford church or Hinton church The one I ought to see? Or were they both too much restored In 1883? I do not know. Towards the west A trail of glory runs And we leave the old Great Central line For Banbury and buns. A poem written by:
SIR JOHN BETJEMIN
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