I love trains and I make the long train journey to and from Yorkshire and Cornwall often. I'm making it today. I also love Robert Louis Stevenson, here's his really good train 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 there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away on 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!
Robert Louis Stevenson
and whilst we're on the subject-
On the train 2
Mostly the gardens seen from trains, attract our scorn.
We note the mossy patches of an unmown lawn,
a shed just sited so to block the sun,
an untrimmed hedge, an empty rabbit run
Abandoned toys and plastic chairs lie on the grass,
the barbecue has rusted and decayed.
Old plant pots are migrating down the path -
garden jetsam blown too near the rails
Next door has netted ponds and concrete curbs
with daffodils like soldiers on parade,
no weeds or insects daring to disturb
where nature has been neatly put away.
These horticultural horrors make us feel
that when we bring our own garden to mind
we're glad we see, as we go by at speed
the dirty washing on another person's line.
LW2010
