Classic Poem

" Wreck of the city express, sir, "
The newspaper sellers yell,
The people are buying, buying,
My! don't the papers sell,
And the publishers say in their usual way
" Business is doing well. "

" A tanner down on a three spot,
Losing again, he blowed! "
" Give me a fill of tobacco. "
" Here, a one that I owed. "
" Losing again with — Heavens!
A passenger off the road! "

Seventy-nine was the engine,
Speediest on the line —
We rushed to the van like demons
And waited the signal sign,
Then flashing afar like a scymitar
Went the flame of seventy-nine.

Out in the night as phantoms,
Out to the wreck we steal,
Horror urging our heart-beats,
Feeling as sinners feel —
The rails like souls in torment
Whimpered beneath the wheel.

Above us the moon went sailing
White as the face of death,
Watching the engine gliding
Over the world beneath,
While we pulled at our pipes in silence,
And heard our every breath.

The engine fire is cleaving
A path to the stars on high —
The cirrus clouds in the heaven
Like burial shrouds go by,
Sent from the dim hereafter
For men and women who die.

In the gaunt and gelid cutting
Ghouls of the darkness brood,
A lone, belated raven
Cries through the solitude,
And the signals rise to danger
Redder than human blood.

A crash of brakes in the darkness —
A rush and a crash again:
Men are wailing in anguish,
Women laugh in their pain —
As a prayer that 's prayed by a grave new made
Is the groan of the coupling chain.

The rails are splashed with crimson,
There 's blood on the catcher bar,
The writhing engine hisses
Through the sky-roofed abattoir —
As the flame in a midnight churchyard
Is the light of each chilly star.

" Out with the lint and bandage —
See are the stretchers spread —
Out with a man to the signal
And guard the line ahead.
Haste, and look to the living
Before you bother the dead.

There 's sorrow deeper than tears
That words in vain may speak —
The tearless mother watches
The red on her baby's cheek,
And downcast unwet lashes
Tell of the hearts that break.

Out in the night and the horror
We labour and curse or pray,
" Give me a drink of water — "
" I 'll meet her some other day — "
We place the maimed on the stretchers,
The dead in the six-foot way.

" Two inches wide in the gauging,
Out with the ramps and — yes,
The facing points must have done it —
Lord, what an awful mess!
But hurry and have it ready
For passing the night express. "

" Awful railway disaster, "
The newspapers chronicle —
The men in the streets are buying —
Gracious! the papers sell,
And the publishers say in their usual way
" Business is doing well. "