*Dec 27 2025 | Travel by Edna St Vincent Millay
Original topic subject: December 27, 2025 Travel by Edna St Vincent Millay
Talk The Poetry Collective
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1charl08
Travel (1921)
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going
‐------
Edna St Vincent Millay
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going
‐------
Edna St Vincent Millay
2charl08
I love this poem!
Edna SVM (as no one calls her) is a favourite of mine, and I found the copy of the poem on the Poetry By Heart site. It collects poems that sound good read aloud, with the goal of encouraging school children to have a go at reciting. You can even watch some performances online.
The site also includes accessible information about the poets' lives.
https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/travel
For me (in terms of a personal response) although the steam has been replaced by electric and diesel versions, she's perfectly captured what I feel when I stand on a platform at a big station. I'm supposed to be doing the thing I've planned, but there are so many other journey options I would love to take.
Of course, that's a literal reading rather than the wider one of seeking "greener pastures".
More bio stuff: visit her house
https://millay.org/
Read a more detailed bio (and how her reputation has changed over time) plus more poems:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edna-st-vincent-millay
This is another favourite:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148564/i-being-born-a-woman-and-distresse...
Edna SVM (as no one calls her) is a favourite of mine, and I found the copy of the poem on the Poetry By Heart site. It collects poems that sound good read aloud, with the goal of encouraging school children to have a go at reciting. You can even watch some performances online.
The site also includes accessible information about the poets' lives.
https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/travel
For me (in terms of a personal response) although the steam has been replaced by electric and diesel versions, she's perfectly captured what I feel when I stand on a platform at a big station. I'm supposed to be doing the thing I've planned, but there are so many other journey options I would love to take.
Of course, that's a literal reading rather than the wider one of seeking "greener pastures".
More bio stuff: visit her house
https://millay.org/
Read a more detailed bio (and how her reputation has changed over time) plus more poems:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/edna-st-vincent-millay
This is another favourite:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148564/i-being-born-a-woman-and-distresse...
3PaulCranswick
>1 charl08: I have a few collections of hers, Charlotte and she was very deft in her constructions. Certainly in that post war era she was one of the leading poets and evokes feelings ceaselessly.
As a bit of an "anorak" as a young chap who used to visit the National Railway Museum in York to marvel at The Mallard and The Flying Scotsman and an unrepentant lover of rail as THE means of travel, I can certainly appreciate the sentiments espoused here.
Good choice!
As a bit of an "anorak" as a young chap who used to visit the National Railway Museum in York to marvel at The Mallard and The Flying Scotsman and an unrepentant lover of rail as THE means of travel, I can certainly appreciate the sentiments espoused here.
Good choice!
4TonjaE
>1 charl08: I love trains too. Thank you for sharing.
5DAGray08
Millay is one of my favorite modernist poets. Someone who could master a form and break it at once. It's been a while since I've read this one but I love the sound reading it aloud, and its deceptive simplicity. The idea that even though access to travel is still somewhere in the distance, imagination can sustain her.
6DebiCates
>1 charl08: Thank you Charlotte!
I literally read this one aloud after I had read it first silently. I knew it would add to the perfection of the poem, the hearing of it. I love your sharing of that site, Poetry by Heart, and its purpose. It was fun seeing the young man enthusiastically recite this poem. Kids have a natural affection for poetry (rhyming, rhythm, memorability). Too bad something happens along the way that turns so many off.
There is something about train travel, even these days, that is more cozy than any travel method I can think of. I wish there were trains for commuting and traveling here (West Texas). The only trains around me are long, long freight trains....yet, when I hear the plaintive horn in the distance, I am filled with nostalgia and lonesome longing.
SVM (ha) was quite a woman, brilliantly self-assured and going her own way most of her life. I would love to hear one of her "her riveting readings and performances." I wonder if there is a recording somewhere...
And oh! I LOVED LOVED LOVED the other poem you linked, "I, being born a woman and distressed" Wow. 1923? Amazing.
I literally read this one aloud after I had read it first silently. I knew it would add to the perfection of the poem, the hearing of it. I love your sharing of that site, Poetry by Heart, and its purpose. It was fun seeing the young man enthusiastically recite this poem. Kids have a natural affection for poetry (rhyming, rhythm, memorability). Too bad something happens along the way that turns so many off.
There is something about train travel, even these days, that is more cozy than any travel method I can think of. I wish there were trains for commuting and traveling here (West Texas). The only trains around me are long, long freight trains....yet, when I hear the plaintive horn in the distance, I am filled with nostalgia and lonesome longing.
SVM (ha) was quite a woman, brilliantly self-assured and going her own way most of her life. I would love to hear one of her "her riveting readings and performances." I wonder if there is a recording somewhere...
And oh! I LOVED LOVED LOVED the other poem you linked, "I, being born a woman and distressed" Wow. 1923? Amazing.
7elenchus
While I resonate too with the readings above regarding the romance of trains and the lure of greener pastures in St Vincent Millay’s lines, I hear at the same time a cautionary tale directed at herself. Stay mindful, she seems to remind herself, of all the fine and good things you would leave behind were you to succumb to the enticing prospects over the next hill. I feel this most strongly in the third stanza, which seems to put on the brakes, so to speak, on the train she is so eager to jump on earlier.
8SandraArdnas
>7 elenchus: I too read the last one stanza as, if not straight out cautionary, at least mindful of the trade-off of venturing forth with each enticing train.
The poem is deceptively simple, but then reveals layers of meaning as it settles in your mind. Masterfully done.
I'm also even more enamored with I, being born a woman and distressed. I imagine many found it quite scandalous at the time :D
The poem is deceptively simple, but then reveals layers of meaning as it settles in your mind. Masterfully done.
I'm also even more enamored with I, being born a woman and distressed. I imagine many found it quite scandalous at the time :D
9DebiCates
>7 elenchus: >8 SandraArdnas: Re-reading that third stanza, I now get that quiet hint of self caution. Seems to me, reading the two poems, she was a person very much in touch with the wide and honest scope of her feelings.
One of the reasons I like haiku so much is because it is deceptively simple. I admire that, and this poem has that feature as well.
One of the reasons I like haiku so much is because it is deceptively simple. I admire that, and this poem has that feature as well.
10noseinabook58
Thanks for posting. Want to linger over it a bit more before I comment. Thanks too for recommending the poetry by heart site. Brilliant! I am currently reading a book by Gyles Brandreth, "Dancing By The Light Of The Moon" in which he strongly advocates for learning poetry by heart.
11GraceCollection
Hmm... I sort of get the opposite impression from this poem. That despite how good her life seems — how perfect the night is for sleep, how wonderful her friends are — she can't seem to escape a sense of something missing, a longing to escape.
I've lived/studied/worked near enough train tracks at least half my life to hear the whistle blow. Even as I type, I can hear the rumble of one crossing. Often, the noise fades into the background — sometimes guests will be surprised at a whistle I didn't even consciously register, being so used to them. Yet somehow my attention is sometimes gravitated unerringly towards a train, an airplane, a bus I know I'm not going to take...
I've lived/studied/worked near enough train tracks at least half my life to hear the whistle blow. Even as I type, I can hear the rumble of one crossing. Often, the noise fades into the background — sometimes guests will be surprised at a whistle I didn't even consciously register, being so used to them. Yet somehow my attention is sometimes gravitated unerringly towards a train, an airplane, a bus I know I'm not going to take...
12AnishaInkspill
I read this v slowly, remembering the words from Stephen Fry's book Ode Less Travelled of reading a poem, and found there is a quality running through this, where 'miles away', and 'sleep and dreaming' also heightens this.
This part is my favourite:
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
a wonderful choice, thank you
This part is my favourite:
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
a wonderful choice, thank you
14charl08
I've so enjoyed reading the responses to this poem, thank you for helping me to appreciate it even more.
15Interstellar_Octopus
>1 charl08: I am a big fan of train poems. Love em. Whether they use trains as metaphors, or as subjects, I love em. My favourite train poem is by Stephen Spender, which is one of the first poems I memorised:
The Express
After the first powerful, plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.
Without bowing and with restrained unconcern
She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,
The gasworks, and at last the heavy page
Of death, printed by gravestones in the cemetery.
Beyond the town, there lies the open country
Where, gathering speed, she acquires mystery,
The luminous self-possession of ships on ocean.
It is now she begins to sing — at first quite low
Then loud, and at last with a jazzy madness —
The song of her whistle screaming at curves,
Of deafening tunnels, brakes, innumerable bolts.
And always light, aerial, underneath,
Retreats the elate metre of her wheels.
Streaming through metal landscapes on her lines,
She plunges new eras of white happiness,
Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves
And parallels clean like trajectories from guns.
At last, further than Edinburgh or Rome,
Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night
Where only a low stream-line brightness
Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is light.
Ah, like a comet through flame, she moves entranced,
Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough
Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal.
The Express
After the first powerful, plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.
Without bowing and with restrained unconcern
She passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,
The gasworks, and at last the heavy page
Of death, printed by gravestones in the cemetery.
Beyond the town, there lies the open country
Where, gathering speed, she acquires mystery,
The luminous self-possession of ships on ocean.
It is now she begins to sing — at first quite low
Then loud, and at last with a jazzy madness —
The song of her whistle screaming at curves,
Of deafening tunnels, brakes, innumerable bolts.
And always light, aerial, underneath,
Retreats the elate metre of her wheels.
Streaming through metal landscapes on her lines,
She plunges new eras of white happiness,
Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves
And parallels clean like trajectories from guns.
At last, further than Edinburgh or Rome,
Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night
Where only a low stream-line brightness
Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is light.
Ah, like a comet through flame, she moves entranced,
Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough
Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal.
16DebiCates
>15 Interstellar_Octopus: The poem you shared here not only relates with this week's poem but to last week's as well. Spender and Auden were lifelong friends.
Look how young they all were! (L to R, W H Auden, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood)
Somewhere on the web I also saw the same grouping, same order, of them older.
Look how young they all were! (L to R, W H Auden, Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood)
Somewhere on the web I also saw the same grouping, same order, of them older.
18LolaWalser
>1 charl08:
This makes me think irresistibly of the motif of hoboes, train jumpers for fun or profit. (As my profile pic attests...) Is there a more potent symbol of a call to adventure than a train's whistle?
This makes me think irresistibly of the motif of hoboes, train jumpers for fun or profit. (As my profile pic attests...) Is there a more potent symbol of a call to adventure than a train's whistle?
19DebiCates
>18 LolaWalser: Oh, I have admired your dynamic and expressive pic but didn't realize it was between train cars. How wonderful!
Today, as I was driving home from out of town, I saw several freight train cars stopped on tracks, waiting for unloading, I guess. Hardly a one without graffiti (sometimes just graffiti, sometimes graffiti art) on them. I idly wondered where those images/messages originated, how far from home had they traveled.
Today, as I was driving home from out of town, I saw several freight train cars stopped on tracks, waiting for unloading, I guess. Hardly a one without graffiti (sometimes just graffiti, sometimes graffiti art) on them. I idly wondered where those images/messages originated, how far from home had they traveled.
20LolaWalser
>19 DebiCates:
It's a photo by Cartier-Bresson and for a long time I saw it, surreally, as someone jumping between skyscrapers. Then someone said "boxcars" and I went "oh" :)
It's a photo by Cartier-Bresson and for a long time I saw it, surreally, as someone jumping between skyscrapers. Then someone said "boxcars" and I went "oh" :)
21DebiCates
>20 LolaWalser: I had thought something similar! ha!
I like boxcars and that symbolism better. Do you?
I like boxcars and that symbolism better. Do you?
22LolaWalser
>21 DebiCates:
Boxcars, definitely! I should explain that originally LT enabled only smaller profile pictures, and I had uploaded just a thumbnail (rather obvious now, so blurry) which hid the little identifying details of the train.
Boxcars, definitely! I should explain that originally LT enabled only smaller profile pictures, and I had uploaded just a thumbnail (rather obvious now, so blurry) which hid the little identifying details of the train.
