Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. FROM TURIN TO PARIS, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. FROM TURIN TO PARIS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tireless, hour after hour, over mountain plains and rivers
Last Line: And the glitter and the roar already, and the rush of the life of paris.
Subject(s): Paris, France; Railroads; Tourists; Travel; Railways; Trains; Journeys; Trips


TIRELESS, hour after hour, over mountains plains and rivers,
The express train rushes on.

The shadows change, the sun and moon rise and set;
Day fades into night, and night into day,
The great cities appear and disappear over the horizon.

On through the hot vineyards of Piedmont the express train rushes;
The great-limbed Ligurian peasant sprawls asleep in the third-class
carriage which has been put on for a portion of the course;
The calm grave country girls droop their lids to slumber;
The huge unwieldy friar with elephantine limbs, small eyes, and snout like
an ant-eater—not a particle of religion in his whole body—gazes
blankly out of the window;
And the young mother with black lace on her head looks after her little
brood.

On through the hot vineyards in the fierce afternoon the express train
rushes—the villages on the hill-tops twinkle through the blaze—the
fireman opens the furnace-door of the engine and stokes up again and again.
The first-class passengers dispose themselves as best they may, with blinds
down, on the hot and dusty cushions;
The respectable and cold-mutton-faced English gentleman and his wife and
daughters, the blase Chinaman with yellow fan, the little Persian boy so brown,
lying asleep against the side of his instructor,
The deeply-lined large-faced shaven old Frenchman, the Italian artist,
bearded, nearing forty years old, with expressive mouth and clear discerning
eyes,
Dispose themselves as best they may.

The sides of the carriages lie open, like glass.
The young priest fresh from College recites his even song, then addresses
himself to the conversion of his Protestant fellow-traveler—I see his
winning manners at first, and then his intimidatory frowns followed by threats
of hell-fire;
The group of laughing girls in one compartment are talking three or four
languages;
In another an Italian officer leans close in conversation to a
yellow-haired young woman, and touches her lightly every now and then on the
arm;
In a third sits a bedizened old hag, purveyor of human flesh—with
great greedy clever eyes (once beautiful under their still long lashes), deep
wrinkles (yet not one of wisdom or of sorrow), and thin cruel lips;
On a frequent errand from London to Italy she travels;
I hear her pious expressions as she talks to the lady sitting opposite to
her—I note her habit of turning up her eyes as of one shocked;
And still the train rushes on, and the fields fly past and the vineyards.

2

Dusk closes down, and the train rushes on and on;
The mountains stand rank behind rank, and valley beyond valley,
Towering up and up over the clouds even into broad day again.
Lo! the great measureless slopes with receding dwindling perspective of
trees and habitations;
Here at their foot the trellised gardens, and rivers roaring under the
stone bridges of towns,
And there the far ledges where the tumbled roofs of tiny hamlets are
perched—the terrace after terrace of vine and wheat, the meadows with grass
and flowers;
The zigzag path, the lonely chalet, the patches of cultivation almost
inaccessible,
The chestnut woods, and again the pinewoods, and beyond again, where no
trees are, the solitary pasturages;
[The hidden upper valleys bare of all but rocks and grass—they too
with their churches and villages;]
And beyond the pasturages, aye beyond the bare rocks, through the great
girdle of the clouds—high high in air—
The inaccessible world of ice, scarce trodden of men.

3

There the rich sunlight dwells, calm like an aureole of glory, over a
thousand forms of snow and rock clear-cut delaying.
But below in the dusk along the mountain-bases the train climbs painfully,
Crossing the putty-colored ice-cold streams again and again with tardy
wheel;
Till the great summit tunnel is reached, then tilting forward,
With many a roar and rush and whistle and scream from gallery to gallery
It flies—rolls like a terror-stricken thing down the great slopes into
the darkness—and night falls in the valleys.

4

Here too then also, and without fail, as everywhere else,
The same old human face looking forth—
Whether in the high secluded valleys where all winter comes no sound from
the outer world, or whether by the side of the great iron road where the
plate-layer runs to bring a passenger a cup of cold water, or whether loafing in
the market-place of the fourth-rate country town—the same.
Here too from the door of her little wooden tenement the worn face looking
forth—fringed with grey hair and cap—the old woman peering anxiously
down the road for her old man;
[Saw you not how when he left her in the morning, how anxiously, how
lovingly, with what strange transformation of countenance—Death close
behind her—she prayed him early to return?]
The little boy with big straw bat and short blouse bringing the goats home
at evening, the gape-mouthed short-petticoated squaw that accompanies him;
The peasant lying in the field face downwards and asleep, while his wife
and children finish the remainder of his meal; the bullock-faced workers on the
roads or over the lands;
Ever the same human face, ever the same brute men and women—poignant
with what divine obscure attractions!

And the dainty-handed Chinaman in the first-class carriage surveys them as
he passes, with mental comparisons;
And the string of mules waits at the railroad crossing in the last dusk as
the train thunders by, and the navvy with great shady hat and grey flannel
shirt, and scarf round his waist, waits;
And the inhabitants of opposite hemispheres exchange glances with one
another for a moment.

5

The night wears on—and yet the same steady onward speed—the draw
of the great cities, Paris and London, beginning already to be felt;
The pause for a few minutes at a junction—the good coffee and milk,
the warm peaceful air, the late moon just rising, the few poplars near, the
mountains now faint in the distance behind;
The faces seen within the cars, hour after hour, with closed eyes, the
changed equalised expression of them, the overshadowing humanity—
(The great unconscious humanity in each one!)
The old bedizened hag overshadowed,
The young priest and his recalcitrant opponent both equally
overshadowed—their arguments so merely nothing at all; the beautiful
artist-face overshadowed;
The unsafe tunnel passed in the dead of the night, the slow tentative
movement of the train, the forms and faces of men within—visible by the
light of their own lanterns, anxious with open mouths looking upward at the
roof—all overshadowed;
The little traveler asleep with his head on the lap of his
instructor—the Persian boy—traveling he too on a long journey, farther
than London or Paris;
The westward swing of the great planets through the night, the faint early
dawn, the farms and fields flying past once more;
The great sad plains of Central France, the few trees, the innumerable
cultivation, the peasants going out so early to work,
The rising of the sun, for a new day—the great red ball so bold rising
unblemished on all the heart-ache and suffering, the plans, the schemes, the
hopes, the desires, the despairs of millions—
And the glitter and the roar already, and the rush of the life of Paris.





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