page 5

The Song of the Engine-driver

Away, away on our iron track!
Who shall follow or bring us back!
O'er hill and valley, o'er river and stream,
We fly on the wings of the rushing steam.
Mine is the mare of the English breed,
The mare of the iron frame,
That on coal and water alone doth feed,
And of man's own genius came.
The mare of the loud and fiery breath,
Whose touch is fear, and whose tread is death;
Whose eyes gleam forth, so strangely bright,
As they rush along thro’ the shadowy night;
Whose limbs and sinews are brass and steel,
Whose mouth a furnace, whose foot a wheel;
Whose snort is loud as the breaker's roar,
When it foaming rolls on the beaten shore;
Whose scream is like the Hyena's cry,
Or the yells of a horse in his agony,
Which falls so wild on the startled ear,
That oft the lion will turn in fear
And hide himself from the light of day,
Till the horrid noise has passed away.
And yet, though her voice is strange and wild,
She may be ruled by a little child.
No human passions, no human pains,
No love, no hate in her fiery veins;
No hope, no fear her bosom knows,
Nor whence she came, nor whither she goes.
List to the beat of her panting breast!
She never wearies nor sighs for rest;
The only comfort that she doth claim
Is a little oil for her heated frame.
Look how the white breath rises high,
Losing itself in the azure sky,
Like a spirit freed from the chains of time,
And soaring up to its better clime!
Lives there among our race a mind
So dull and empty that it can find
No poetry in this living mass
Of iron, and copper, and steel, and brass?
This being, born from the human brain,
That knows no pleasure and feels no pain;
This mighty and majestic form,
That drives alike through the calm and storm;
Nor bends nor shrinks from the pelting rain,
But laughs in the teeth of the hurricane.
How grand she is in her speed and might,
Rolling along in the dark midnight,
With whistling scream and thunder blast,
As though some demon spirit had passed;
And the ground all trembling ‘neath her tread,
And bright with the glow of her furnace red.
All hail! George Stephenson to thee,
The parent of this mighty race,
That on the land and o'er the sea
Has triumphed over Time and space!
Earth needs no white sepulchral stone
To tell her how thy life was spent;
The locomotive stands alone,
Thine all-sufficient monument.

—James Lister.

The above lines are from the pen of Mr. James Lister, and were written soon after the death of George Stephenson, the famous locomotive engineer. Stephenson was born at Wylam on the 9th June, 1781, and died at Tapton Chesterfield, on the 12th August, 1848.