Stephen Spender - The Express lyrics

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 pa**es the houses which humbly crowd outside, The gasworks, and at last the heavy page Of d**h, 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.