From a Railway Carriage

Product Information

The repetition of a similar sound at the beginning of neighboring words is called alliteration. It is used to create internal rhyming. This device is used in the following instances: Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “From a Railway Carriage” begins with the description of the train’s speed. The reference to “fairies” and “witches” signifies the speaker is a child, familiar with the characters of fairy tales. He rejects the fact quite straightforwardly that this train he is riding is way faster than the winged fairies and magical witches. According to the speaker, the train is not faster than them. Instead, the bridges, houses, hedges, and ditches, that move past his carriage showcase such swiftness. In the following line, he metaphorically describes the train as an army marching forward for a battle. The preparedness of the troops and their unhindered motion is comparable to that of the train. From the carriage, he can notice the horses and cattle grazing through the meadows. At last, the speaker describes each piece of scenery as a “glimpse” that stays for a short period and then fades forever. While traveling by train, none can notice a particular scene next time. Thus, each journey becomes unique, unraveling newer scenes against the changing canvas of nature.

The poem “From a Railway Carriage” begins with a simile: “Faster than fairies” and “faster than witches.” Stevenson describes how the fairies and witches are not as fast as the train. This device is also used in lines 3 and 6: In the first example, the moving train is compared to troops marching for a battle, and the sights of apparently moving “hill” and “plain” are compared to “driving rain.” Metaphor Up-Hill” by Christina Rossetti — It’s one of the best-loved poems of Christina Rossetti that describes one speaker’s hesitations on the uphill journey of life. The poem “From a Railway Carriage” was first published in Robert Louis Stevenson’s collection of children’s poetry, A Child’s Garden of Verses, in 1885. It is one of the most popular children’s works. This poem is inspired by Stevenson’s extensive traveling experience across Europe. Due to his ill health, he occasionally had to move to warmer climates to recover. His experience of traveling by train is captured in this poem from the perspective of a child speaker. This piece also describes how it felt while traveling in a railway carriage car in the 19th-century. From a Railway Carriage’ is a very useful poem to use with children who aren’t particularly familiar with poetry. You can use this resource to provide students with an understanding of the use of rhyme schemes and other principle of poetry such as simile and metaphor. If you’re using this resource with older children, it has plenty of space around the text to allow learners to annotate their copy if they choose to. It’s also a great way to spark a class discussion - what is Stevenson trying to tell us in this poem? How does the period it was written in affect our understanding of the poem? More resources on ‘From a Railway Carriage’Stevenson uses a number of poetic devices to depict the movement of the train. The important figures of speech used in the poem are exemplified below: Simile Stevenson uses several personal metaphors in the poem. For instance, there is a personal metaphor in the phrase, “the green for stringing the daisies!” The “green,” representing grass, is portrayed as a thread to string daisies. To be specific, there is only one instance of metaphor, and it occurs in the last two lines:

From a Railway Carriage is a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, included within his 1885 collection A Child's Garden of Verses. [1]The final two programmes focus on classic poetry and include a selection of well-known poems often taught at Key Stage 2. These poems are read by the actors Maxine Peake and Julian Rhind-Tutt. Using the audio The rhyme scheme of “From a Railway Carriage” is AABB. It means each two lines end with similar rhyming words; for instance, the first two lines contain end rhymes: “witches” and “ditches”. This scheme is followed throughout the text. The rhyming pairs of words include:

Introduce your kids to another of Stevenson’s poems with our PowerPoint on ‘Windy Nights’, a poem that makes fantastic use of imagery and descriptive language to evoke the sound of the wind This device is used in two instances in the last stanza: “And there is the green for stringing the daisies!” and “Each a glimpse and gone for ever!” These lines convey the speaker’s amazement at the scenes. In the last two lines of the first stanza, the speaker informs readers that he has been riding before the narration has begun. Thus, the painted stations “again” slid past his carriage. Stevenson uses an auditory image of the whistling sound coming from the stations when the train crosses them. The “mill” and “river” are compared to a “glimpse”. They are liked small clips of the motion picture seen from the railway carriage. AlliterationThis great resource provides learners with their very own copy of ‘From a Railway Carriage’ by the famous Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson. The poem describes the view from a railway carriage as it speeds through the countryside. It’s a great way to introduce your learners to poetry, thanks to its simple rhyme scheme and clear imagery. The sheet even includes a fun illustration of a train that pupils can colour in! Stevenson’s “From a Railway Carriage” is written from the perspective of a child who is traveling by train and capturing the external world from his carriage. He is quite amazed to experience the speed with which the train marches forward like troops in a battle. It moves faster than the fairies and witches collectively. From his carriage, he sees how the sights of the hill and plain fly past. The painted stations whistle by in a wink.

The programmes can be used in a variety of ways. You can listen to them in their entirety or listen to and focus on one poem at a time. Students can read the text of the poem before, during or after listening to the recording and there are suggestions in these notes for pre-, during-, and post- listening activities. Using the images: You’ve read his poetry, but what about the man himself? Our Robert Louis Stevenson Information Sheet provides the story of the great man’s life along with some surprising and fascinating facts The speaker further adds the sights or visual images of the hill and the plain that he notices from his carriage. Everything noticeable from his coach is so swift that he cannot differentiate one scene from another. He describes the collective scene through the image of heavy rain.Journey to the Interior” by Margaret Atwood — In this poem, Atwood describes the road she often takes to roam into the thrilling regions of her mind. Stevenson employs visual and kinesthetic imagery in the first stanza. He visually depicts the scene that the speaker witnesses from his carriage. Through kinesthetic images, he describes the apparent motion of bridges, houses, hedges, etc. The last line of the first stanza, “Painted stations whistle by,” contains auditory imagery. This line refers to the whistle’s sound coming from the station when the train crosses it. The second stanza also contains similar imagery. As the train moves hurriedly, the speaker cannot hear the sound of others outside or hear the smell of daisies. He can only capture their acts when the train moves past them. Besides, Stevenson uses organic imagery in lines 12 and 16 to convey the speaker’s inner feelings of joy and wonder. You can encourage your learners to think more deeply about word choice in Stevenson’s poem with this ‘From a Railway Carriage’ Missing words Activity, which lets pupils provide some of their own words and see how it changes the meaning