From a Railway Carriage
Robert Louis Stevenson · 1885
Stevenson's rhythm gallops like the train itself, rattling past hedges, cattle and children in a blur of quick, vivid glimpses. It is one of the great read-aloud party pieces, made for a fast, breathless voice.
From A Child's Garden of Verses. See the whole collection.
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 there is the green for stringing the daisies
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
About this poem
Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885 · From A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this for A Child's Garden of Verses in 1885, the same book that gave us 'The Swing' and 'Bed in Summer'. He was often ill as a boy and knew what it was to watch the world go by from a bed or a window, which is partly why the whole collection is so full of looking. Read the poem aloud and you can hear the train in it. The words gallop, and the rhythm runs like wheels over rails.
So read it fast, and let it speed up as it goes. It is made for a real train journey, or for a window with things going past. Point at each sight as it flies by, the way the poem does.
Public domain. Text from A Child's Garden of Verses (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition