The Railway Train
The Railway Train - meaning Summary
Machine as Living Creature
Dickinson presents the locomotive as a living, almost animal presence moving through landscape. The speaker watches the train devour miles, skirt mountains, squeeze through quarries, and roar down hills, mixing wonder and mild amusement. Industrial power is rendered with pastoral and religious echoes, shifting from prodigious force to punctual calm as it returns to its “stable door.” The poem frames technology as both majestic and tame, inviting readers to notice its sounds, movements, and the odd intimacy between machine and environment.
Read Complete AnalysesI like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step Around a pile of mountains, And, supercilious, peer In shanties by the sides of roads; And then a quarry pare To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while In horrid, hooting stanza; Then chase itself down the hill And neigh like Boanerges; Then, punctual as a star, Stop – docile and omnipotent – At its own stable door.
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