Written Eighty Years Ago.

The following lines, written in 1849, were inscribed to the “Steam Engine Society,” of Bolton (England), and although not remarkable as verse, give quite a vivid impression of the power of the steam locomotive to grip the imagination in those early days:—

Lo! here is poetry—the railway train
First the shrill whistle, then the distant roar—
The ascending cloud of steam—the gleaming brass—
The mighty moving arm; and on amain
The mass comes thundering like an avalanche o'er
The quaking earth—a thousand faces pass
A moment—and are gone like whirlwind sprites.
Scarce seen; so much the roaring speed benights
All sense and recognition for awhile;
A little space—a minute—and a mile!
Then look again, how swift it journeys on—
Away! away! along the horizon,
Like drifted cloud to its determined place,
Power, speed and distance, melting into space.