Stephen Spender’s The Express glorifies the express train. The train here is a symbol of the modern industrial civilization. The glorious running of the train to its destination is vividly pictured by the poet. The movement of the train is like the majestic movements of a queen. The express speeding through the open country is then compared to an elegant ship on ocean.

1. - Stephen Spender
EXPRESS
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E
Assistant Professor,
Indo -American College, Cheyyar.
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2. Stephen Spender was born on
February 28, 1909, in London.
He attended Oxford University and fought
in the Spanish Civil War.
In the 1920s and 1930s he associated with
other poets and socialists, such as W. H.
Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Louis
MacNeice, and C. Day Lewis, and his early
poetry was often inspired by social protest.
During World War II, Spender
worked for the London fire service.
He co-founded Horizon magazine
with Cyril Connolly and served as its
editor (1939- 1941). He was editor of
Encounter magazine from 1953 to
1966.
Spender's books of poetry include Twenty
Poems (1930), Vienna (1934), The Still
Centre (1939), Poems of Dedication
(1946), and The Generous Days (1971).
Spender was professor of English at
University College, London, from 1970 to
1977, and gave frequent lecture tours in
the United States.
He was knighted in 1983. Spender died on
July 16, 1995.
Sir Stephen Harold
Spender (1909-
1995), poet, critic,
translator, travel
writer, and English
man of letters, first
came to prominence
as a poet of social
protest in the 1930s.

3. The Express
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 passes the houses which humbly crowd outside,
The gasworks and at last the heavy page
Of death, 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,
Goes the elate metre of her wheels.
Steaming through metal landscape on her lines
She plunges new eras of wild happiness
Where speed throws up strange shapes, broad curves
And parallels clean like the steel of guns.
At last, further than Edinburgh or Rome,
Beyond the crest of the world, she reaches night
Where only a low streamline brightness
Of phosphorus on the tossing hills is white.
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.
- Stephen Spender

4. Poetry Review
The train begins to sing when it reaches the open
country. It’s low , but then becomes louder.
Stephen Spender’s The Express
glorifies the express train.
The glorious running of the
train to its destination is vividly
pictured by the poet.
The whistle that announces the departure of the
train is described as a manifesto.
Finally it acquires the
madness of jazz music.
She is also compared to a comet
blazing through the sky.
The express
speeding
through the
open country is
then
compared to
an elegant
ship on
ocean.
The train here is a symbol of
the modern industrial civilization.
The movement of the train
is like the majestic
movements of a queen.

5. Poetry Review…
Romantic poets often leave the city and find
solace in the lap of nature. But Spender’s poem
makes the express train a true romantic subject.
He is trying to say that the beauty of the world
of machines excels the beauty of nature.
The rhythmic movement of the poem indicates
the majestic journey of the train.
The glorification of the train reaches its summit
when the poet says that no natural sound, not even
the song of a bird can equal the music of the train.
Thus the poem offers a sharp
contrast to the traditional
nature poems.

6. Spender uses shades of meter to
draw attention sections of his
poem, for instance after "she"
blows "her whistle screaming at
the curves" and continues to gain
momentum and speed.
The Express by Stephen Spender is a semi-meter free verse
poem of 27 lines with a presence of iambs in lines that can be
scanned according to pentameter.
Examples of places where the traces of iambic pentameter appear are:
She pass' -es the hous' -es which humb' -ly crowd outside‘ 5
Where speed' throws up' strange shapes’, broad curves' 9
Spender points to the vitality
of the express locomotive by
juxtaposing the "mystery" of
its "gathering speed" in the
"open country" with the still
death of the "cemetery."
Analysis of the poem
Then he dramatizes the distance the express
travels by defining the brightness of the light at
the far reaches of the world by the word "night":
brightness so far removed that it's part of night.
The underlying metaphor personifies the express
locomotive and compares "her" to a queen: "But
gliding like a queen', she leaves the station."
The theme is the might and prowess of the
locomotive express train .
The theme is illustrated in the closing lines, 25, 26 and 27:
“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.”
Spender uses personification through
the repetition of "she" and "her.“
Spender employs metaphor, in
comparison of the "landscape" to the
railway tracks;
compare the express's whistle to a song.
"she begins to sing"
Spender employs two similes.
The first compares the parallel train ties to
bullet trajectories: "And parallels clean
like trajectories from guns."
The second compares the express to a
comet: "Ah, like a comet through flame,
she moves entranced”

7. With the steaming Express train the poet
drives home the message that the new age
Romanticism will not wither away.
The new age Romanticism
The Express by the Auden Generation
poet, Stephen Spender is a modern
Romantic Poem glorifying the Express
train in motion, which can be regarded
as a symbol of industrial revolution.
The poem is an answer to the
degenerating world of the 20th
century, with hardly anything to
speak or think of romantically.
A true Romantic is likely to find new
“wild happiness” from amidst the
machines, gas works and pistons.
It’s a personal meditative poem starting
from the plain of reality and ascending to
the realms of metaphysical.
The poem is literally ‘a living poem in
motion’ with its alliteration, blank verse
and concrete images covering power and
glory, death, metaphysical transcend.
The first stanza, Spender personifies an
Express train and compares it to a queen.
The whistle it blows and the sound of
brakes and countless bolts all perform
together to create a harmonious melody
which is so distinct and unique to this
magnificent creation.

8. Just like a declaration of an
arriving queen, the Express makes
its assertions in the form of its
loud whistle and puffs of black
smoke venting out its chimney.
Then, with an aristocratic majesty of
queen, it slowly makes it move, in an
imperious and stately motion.
The houses surrounding the railway tracks seem to be
making way for the Express’ passage just like people do
before a queen is to proceed.
They stand humbly and the queen crosses, without even
noticing their great reverence.
The poem is a beautiful piece of imagination in which
the poet has not only skillfully captured the structure,
motion and sound of an Express train but has
artistically converted into a spirited, majestic and
strange creature possessing the grandeur of a queen.

9. Eventually, the poet feels that the Express, in its intoxication and
speed, moves much ahead the limits of horizon and reaches the
last threshold of the world. She rises to the space or stars and
becomes a part of this universe, where there’s no brightness but
faint light of stars and planets both near and far off.
The theme of the poem is to celebrate the might and
prowess of the Express which transgressing the limits of a
physical world reaches to the heart of the dead and elevates to
purity of heaven. There is no phenomenon real or imaginable
that this mysterious creature has left untouched. With its
extraordinary power, beauty and song it even bewilders Nature
and the poet believes that Nature has nothing more beautiful to
challenge the beauty of an Express train.