From a Railway Carriage Lyrics
Sixteen lines that race past a train window: bridges, hedges, horses, a child picking brambles, a mill and a river, each seen for a moment and gone. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote it in rhymed couplets that rattle like the wheels.
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 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 forever!
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/from-a-railway-carriage/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Tune
- Read quickly with a steady beat, like wheels on a track, and slow down for the last line
- Best for ages
- 4 to 9 years
What Does From a Railway Carriage Mean?
The poem has two halves of eight lines each. The first half is a blur. A train is "faster than fairies, faster than witches", and the sights fly past in lists: bridges and houses, hedges and ditches. The horses and cattle in the meadows seem to charge beside the carriage "like troops in a battle", a way of saying they look as if they are racing it. Even the painted stations "whistle by".
In the second half the eye catches single things, each one introduced by "Here is" or "there is". A child clambers about picking brambles, a tramp stands and gazes, a green is waiting for someone to string daisies, a runaway cart lumps along the road with its man and load, and a mill and a river slide past. Then comes the last line, "Each a glimpse and gone forever!", which is the whole point: a train gives only a moment of each scene.
Some words: brambles are blackberry bushes, clambers means climbs using hands and feet, stringing the daisies means threading them into a daisy chain, and a tramp is someone who travels about on foot. Driving rain is rain blown hard by the wind, so things fly past "as thick as driving rain".
Every pair of lines rhymes (witches and ditches, battle and cattle, scrambles and brambles), and the quick rhythm does the work of the train.
History and Origin
Stevenson published this poem in his 1885 book A Child's Garden of Verses. Regular passenger trains had been running in Britain since 1830, so by the time he wrote it the view from a carriage window was an ordinary sight, and he chose to catch it in a single breath.
Learning Activities
- Wheel beat: tap both knees to the rhythm while an adult reads the first eight lines at full speed.
- Window list: on a bus or train ride, call out what goes past, then try to remember five things when the journey ends.
- Ten-second drawing: look out of a window for ten seconds, turn away, and draw whatever you can remember.
- Daisy chain: if the grass has daisies, thread a short chain, as the poem says, with a grown-up showing the first split in the stem.