preview

Summary Of The Poem The Train Poem

Satisfactory Essays

I recently came across a poem called “The Trains” by the famous Australian writer Judith Wright in 1915 at the time of Gallipoli World War 1. The poem is about war and how it is interwoven in human lives. As you know there are many countries in the recent times who are suffering due to war we often hear news about, but we rarely think about it. About how the horrendous acts of war can change the lives of innocent people and children forever. Due to this sole reason I was truly intrigued by “The Trains”. It gives the reader an insight to the lives of the sufferers by beautifully describing the pending dark days before the war approached in 1915. I was more drawn to the “The Trains” after I read “A War Song to Englishmen” by William Blake. Both the poems have the same topic but they provide different views about it. “A war song to Englishmen” can be described as a call for war, whereas the “The Trains” can be considered as a piece that persuades human beings to stop committing acts that can destroy the human lives for a long term. The titles for both the poems are ironic. One might read “The Trains” and think it’s probably a poem that describes the trains, as it sounds cheerful but it’s only after you read the poem that you clearly understand the context of it. As jovial as it may seem at the first glance, once read the tone of the poem totally changes. “A War Song to Englishmen" also has the same jovial feel to the title even though the actual poem has a dark atmosphere. Interestingly when you first read it, it seems very simple and a spirit lifting poem, but there is a catch, the more you read it the more you find out its true meaning. It is very important for a poet to use descriptive poetic techniques that create an image in the reader’s mind. This is why William Blake relied heavily on the poetic techniques such as rhetorical questions, irony, repetition, personification and juxtaposition to convey his message and set the tone for the poem. ‘Prepare your hearts for death’s cold hands, prepare’, the personification and the repetition used by Blake here creates a strong and intimidating image of war. The personification used in this stanza paints the image of death as a powerful real person. The poem also

Get Access