The Underground - Analysis

A Honeymoon Journey into the Underworld

The poem turns an ordinary memory of married life into a mythic rehearsal of separation and loss. At first, the couple are simply rushing through the London Underground toward the Albert Hall, playfully late for the Proms. Yet the setting already carries darker possibilities: the vaulted tunnel resembles both a sacred chamber and an entrance to the underworld. By the end, the speaker is alone in a station after the trains have gone, waiting for a footstep he cannot safely turn to see. The remembered chase has become a test of whether love can recover someone from the past.

The Beloved Always Just Ahead

In the opening, the woman speeds ahead in her going-away coat, while the speaker imagines himself as a fleet god gaining on her. The phrase me, me then is crucial: the older speaker looks back at his younger self with a mixture of tenderness and estrangement. He was energetic, amorous, and confident that he could catch up. But the mythic comparisons disturb that confidence. Before he reaches her, she might turn into a reed or a flower—a transformation recalling myths in which women escape pursuing gods by ceasing to be human. Desire makes the chase exhilarating, but it also contains the possibility that the beloved will become unreachable.

The coat heightens this tension. It is festive and vividly physical, flapping as she runs, while its white surface is japped with crimson. White suggests bridal clothing or innocence; crimson introduces passion, injury, or mortality. Even in a honeymoon memory, love is shadowed by the knowledge that bodies and shared moments cannot be kept unchanged.

Buttons Become a Path Back

The falling buttons connect the poem’s two times. During the original run, they spring loose comically, leaving a trail between the Underground and the Albert Hall. In the present, however, the speaker follows that trail as Hansel came, lifting the buttons one by one. Unlike Hansel, who lays markers in order to escape, this speaker retraces markers into the past. His search is therefore paradoxical: each recovered button brings him closer to the memory, but collecting the trail may also erase the route that joins him to it.

The lighthearted language of Honeymooning, mooning around briefly restores the young couple’s intimacy. Then comes the poem’s decisive turn: Our echoes die, followed immediately by and now. The shared pronoun gives way to the solitary I. What was once mutual sound survives only as an echo, and even that echo fades.

The Last Train and the Forbidden Look

The final station is emptied of ordinary movement. The trains are gone; the track is wet, exposed, and bared and tensed. The speaker identifies his own body with it: both are stripped of distraction and made intensely receptive. He listens for your step following, reversing the opening pursuit. Earlier, he followed her; now he hopes she is following him.

The last line invokes Orpheus, who loses Eurydice by looking back while leading her out of the underworld. The phrase damned if I look back carries both colloquial stubbornness and literal mythic danger. If he turns, the beloved may vanish; if he refuses, he cannot confirm that she is there. The poem leaves him inside that cruel contradiction. Memory asks him to look backward, but love’s survival seems to depend on not looking. What began as a breathless romantic chase ends as disciplined, fearful attention to an uncertain returning step.