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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

The Railway Train


              1I like to see it lap the miles,
              2And lick the valleys up,
              3And stop to feed itself at tanks;
              4And then, prodigious, step

              5Around a pile of mountains,
              6And, supercilious, peer
              7In shanties, by the sides of roads;
              8And then a quarry pare

              9To fit its sides, and crawl between,
            10Complaining all the while
            11In horrid, hooting stanza;
            12Then chase itself down hill

            13And neigh like Boanerges;
            14Then, punctual as a star,
            15Stop--docile and omnipotent--
            16At its own stable door.

Notes

1] In 1853 two railroad lines came to Amherst, Emily's home (Johnson, Poems [1963], I: xx).

8] a quarry pare: peel or shave (the sides of) the quarry

9] sides: the existing manuscript version of poem 585 reads "ribs" The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson, edited by R. W. Franklin in volumes (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981: I, 414; fascicle 19; PS 1541 A1 1981 ROBA).

11] stanza: small poem

13] Boanerges: Mark 3. 17 describes how Jesus named his disciplines, the brothers James and John, "Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder"


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Poems (1890-1896) by Emily Dickinson: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Original Volumes Issued in 1890, 1891, and 1896, with an Introduction by George Monteiro (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles).
First publication date: 1891
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1997
Recent editing: 2:2002/5/31*1:2005/2/28

Composition date: 1862
Rhyme: abcb (off-rhyme)


Other poems by Emily Dickinson