Poem of the Week: 'Night Mail'

One of the things that makes poetry often so much more powerful than prose is the SOUND it makes. Whether it is its rhyme, rhythm, alliteration or whatever other sonic device, poetry can have an effect on its reader (or LISTENER) beyond language. In other words, the best poetry can be enjoyed by anyone, even if they don't understand the language it is written in.

When I studied French at A Level, I used to love reading the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, even though many of his poems used French far more difficult than I could actually understand. The SOUND of his poems had a powerful enough effect on me in itself. And this week's poem also relies just as much on its sound (or, specifically, its rhythm) for much of its power and effect.

It is, quite simply, a poem about a train journey. It was commissioned by Royal Mail (or then the GPO or General Post Office) back in the 1936, to accompany a short film they were making about their London-to-Scotland 'mail train'; or, in other words, the GPO, as part of an advertising campaign to increase the number of people writing letters, asked the famous poet, W. H. Auden, to write a poem to help sell their product. Then (as now) most letters are transported by train, and Auden's poem brings the rhythm of the train so powerfully to life that we almost feel like we are on board, like the letters...

Night Mail by W. H. Auden

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

If you want to explore a TUTORIAL about the poem, click here.