Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following, Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack, Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple, Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front, Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance, Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel, Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive, Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining, Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,Īnd there is the green for stringing the daisies! The last is a later poem the locomotive is still a sort of snorting monster, but now one that has integrated itself into the great and small business of daily life.įaster than fairies, faster than witches,Īnd charging along like troops in a battle,Īll through the meadows the horses and cattle:Īll of the sights of the hill and the plain The first four are from roughly the era of Locomotive and reflect some of the age’s wonder, admiration, and even fear of the new machines: “Type of the modern-emblem of motion and power-pulse of the continent”! Ingrid Kern on July 18 T.S.Here are a few favorites. Djeli Clark, The Black God’s Drums: the other point of view April 25th – Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch and another one, Thoughtful Reflections on Genre.May 12 Nathaniel Hawthorne – House of Seven Gables.June 9th 2021 – T Kingfisher: Summer in Orcus.A celebration of the new of the swift future coming hurtling before us. He paints it as alive, it is throbbing and gyrating (and yes, there’s a bit of insinuation there), but a living thing that is larger than life and new and shining – “modern – emblem of motion and power”. But perhaps it is a recognition of a new mythical god its “madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake” and it is a “law of thyself”.
It almost seems to me as if it is a cult leader with it’s obedient cars following. Walt Whitman’s poem very obviously dedicated to a train is evocative to me of something alive, something powerful.
#Tremulous twinkle free
To the free skies unpent and glad and strong. Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes, Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d, (No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,) Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding, Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,īy day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,īy night thy silent signal lamps to swing. Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering įor once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, Thee in they panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day
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