[New-Poetry] All aboard!

[Bill Morgan]

A couple of train poems from Hardy:

 

      At the Raliway Station, Upway

 

'There is not much that I can do,

    For I've no money that's quite my own!'

    Spoke up the pitying child-

A little boy with a violin

At the station before the train came in,--

'But I can play my fiddle to you,

And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!'

 

    The man in the handcuffs smiled;

The constable looked, and he smiled, too,

    As the fiddle began to twang;

And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang

                 With grimful glee:

                  'This life so free

                  Is the thing for me!'

And the constable smiled, and said no word,

As if unconscious of what he heard;

And so they went on till the train came in-

The convict, and boy with the violin.

 

 

          Faintheart in a Railway Train

 

At nine in the morning there passed a church,

At ten there passed me by the sea,

At twelve a forest of oak and birch,

          And then, on a platform, she:

 

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.

I said, 'Get out to her do I dare?'

But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,

And the wheels moved on.  O could it but be

          That I had alighted there!

 

The late Desmond Hawkins used to say that this latter poem constituted
"taking a liberty at a distance after a failure of nerve at close quarters."

 

Cheers,

 

Bill Morgan 

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