journeys

Two poems by two great poets almost paintings made with words. There cannot be a piece of art that is more apt for this quote. Nostalgia and flashbacks are always accompanied no matter how many times you read these poems. In the school days learning poetry that was this prolific was indeed a pleasure. A salute to the master poets from designjatra.

The Railway Train

I 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. 

Emily Dickinson

From A Railway Carriage

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle

All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And here is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart runaway in the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill, and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone forever!

Robert Louis Stevenson