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Emily Dickinson's Collected Poems

Part One: Life 43. I like to see it lap the miles


THE RAILWAY TRAIN.


I like to see it lap the miles,

And lick the valleys up,

And stop to feed itself at tanks;

And then, prodigious, step


Around a pile of mountains,

And, supercilious, peer

In shanties by the sides of roads;

And then a quarry pare


To fit its sides, and crawl between,

Complaining all the while

In horrid, hooting stanza;

Then chase itself down hill


And neigh like Boanerges;

Then, punctual as a star,

Stop -- docile and omnipotent --

At its own stable door.