Listen to the trains rhythm...
September 26, 2012
is making a long railway journey (Mumbai to Delhi) and suddenly remembered one line of what I googled up...and found a lovely poem:
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.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!
Robert Louis Stevenson
I love poems like this which follow the rhythm of their subject..I remember, vaguely, another such poem where the stanzas start with a small, brisk rhythm of words..and then, the words and the rhythm lengthen, as the train pulls tiredly into the station...I wish I could get this poem.
