Class 7 English Chapter 11: Travel

Twelve lines, and no train

The poem is three stanzas of four lines. In none of them does a train actually pass. The line is miles off, and every stanza says so before it says anything else. That is the first thing to get straight, because almost every summary of this poem puts a train in it somewhere.

What she reports by day

The daytime is loud with people talking. Through all of that she picks out a whistle. Nothing about the scene makes that likely, and she does not say she might be imagining it.

What she reports by night

Red cinders over her, and an engine working somewhere. The night is quiet enough for sleeping and dreaming, and the second of those words is a hint about where the train may be coming from. Cinders are burnt coal, and on a real night above a real line they glowed red, so the detail is exact as well as imagined.

Does she hear anything at all?

Probably not. The evidence is in the poem: a line miles away, a day full of other noise, and a night meant for dreams. A reader is allowed to decide, and either answer needs the evidence.

The line that comes three times

Each stanza begins by telling us that no train goes by. Said once it is information. Said three times in twelve lines it stops being information and becomes the shape of her attention.

Why repetition works here

Because a habit cannot be described, only shown. The poet could have written that the speaker thinks about trains constantly. Instead she makes a reader meet the same sentence three times, and the reader feels it. An asserted habit has to be taken on trust. A repeated one is evidence.

Day and night as a pair

The first stanza is noisy and the second is silent. Those are opposites, and the poem sets them side by side on purpose, because the thing it wants to prove is what they have in common.

And the thing they share

Her. Whatever the world is doing, loud or still, she is listening for a train. That is the whole argument of the first eight lines, made twice over rather than stated once.

The third stanza begins somewhere else

It leaves the railway alone and turns to people. Her heart is warm with the friends she makes, and she says she will know no better ones than these. There is no complaint anywhere in that.

Then comes the word yet

And after it, the sentence the poem exists for: there is no train she would not take, and she does not mind where it is going. The two halves sit in one stanza without contradicting each other.

Why that is not unhappiness

Because nothing in the poem is wrong. She is not lonely, not bored, and not badly treated. A reader who calls this a sad poem has to ignore the two lines about her friends.

What longing actually is

Wanting to go, while having no reason to leave. That is a harder thing to write than misery, and it is what the third stanza is for. Misery explains itself; a reader only has to be told what is wrong. Longing has to be shown beside a life that is perfectly all right.

No matter where it is going

Five words that give the game away. Somebody planning a journey has a destination. Somebody who would take any train at all wants the going rather than the arriving.

What the train stands for

Adventure, and opportunity. Both of those are about what might happen next rather than about any particular place, which is why the destination is left out of a poem called Travel.

What it does not stand for

Comfort, and escape. A train is not comfortable in this poem; it is loud, hot and full of sparks. And escape needs something to escape from, and the poem has carefully given her nothing.

Why the poem is called Travel

Not journey, and not destination. Travel is the activity itself, and the title tells you before the first line that nowhere in particular is going to be mentioned.

What a reader is left with

Two true things at once. A life she values and a train she would board without asking where it went. Most people recognise the feeling long before they can explain it.

And why three stanzas is the right length

Any longer and the repeated line would become tiresome. Any shorter and the turn in the third stanza would arrive before a reader had settled into the habit the first two build.

Scenario:

Three pupils answer the same question on the last stanza. Ishan writes that the speaker is lonely and wants to get away from the people around her. Juhi writes that the speaker loves her friends and so would never leave. The train, she says, is a daydream given up. Kabir writes that she values her friends as much as anybody could and still wants to go. The poem puts both in one stanza on purpose. Their teacher marks one full and one half. The third is asked to read the first two lines of the stanza again.

Analysis:

Kabir has it. The stanza states both things and joins them with a yet, which adds rather than cancels. Ishan has to ignore two lines to reach loneliness. They are the ones that say her heart is warm, and that she expects no better friends. That is the answer sent back for a re-reading. Juhi has read those lines, which is why she gets half: she then invents something the poem does not say, that the wish has been given up. Nothing in the text abandons it. The last line is in the present tense and it is the strongest sentence in the poem. All three are circling one thing. A text can assert two claims that feel opposed, and an answer keeping only one of them has tidied the stanza rather than read it.

Activity:

Write two sentences about yourself that both feel true and seem to pull against each other, and join them with yet. Ask somebody else which half they think you mean more.

Title:

Strip the poem to its claims

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The railway column is long and uncertain and the life column is short and happy, and nothing in it is a complaint. The count at step four is zero, which is why the poem is not sad.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet who published this poem in 1921, when a steam train was the fastest way most people could leave a place.

Cinders are the small burnt pieces of coal thrown out by a steam engine, and at night they really did glow red above a line.

The poem is in three four-line stanzas, a shape short enough to learn by heart in one evening, which is partly why it has stayed well known.

The three stanzas — Day, night, then the heart — A whistle through the noise of the day, cinders and an engine through the quiet of the night, and then the friends and the train she would board.

The last stanza — Warm heart, and still a train — Both at once. Her friends are the best she expects to know AND there is no train she would refuse. Longing is not the same as unhappiness.

A pattern you can hear before you can name

Read any stanza aloud and the rhyme arrives on the third line and again on the fourth. Written down with letters, that is ABAB: the first and third share a sound, the second and fourth share another.

The pairs, stanza by stanza

Away and day, speaking and shrieking. By and sky, dreaming and steaming. Make and take, knowing and going. Three stanzas, six pairs, and the same pattern in each.

Why ABAB suits this poem

Because a reader always has a line to wait through. The rhyme is never next door; it is one line further on, so the stanza keeps reaching forward. A poem about wanting to go somewhere needs exactly that. Couplets would have closed each pair of lines as it arrived, and the restlessness would have gone with them.

And one thing the pairs share

Every second rhyme is an -ing word. Speaking, shrieking, dreaming, steaming, knowing, going. Six of the twelve line-ends are actions still in progress.

What that does

Nothing in the poem has finished happening. The day goes on speaking, the engine goes on steaming, the train goes on going. A reader is left inside an activity rather than after an event.

The whistle that shrieks

Shrieking is the word the book asks you to find, and the device is personification. A whistle is a valve and some steam, and shrieking belongs to a living thing that is frightened or excited.

Why that word and not another

Because a loud whistle could have been described in a dozen ways. This one gives the train a voice, so what reaches her across all those miles sounds like something alive calling out.

Naming a device is not an answer

Personification is three words long. A marker wants the effect, so the answer is: a machine is given a living cry, and the train becomes a creature rather than a piece of engineering.

The same rule, every time

Say what it is, then spend the rest of the answer on what it does. That holds for rhyme, for imagery, for symbol and for tone, and it is the difference between a labelled poem and a read one.

Five expressions worth knowing

Miles away, cinders red, heart is warm, day is loud, engine steaming. The book asks what each one indicates, and each one carries a different kind of information.

What each of them carries

Miles away is distance. Cinders red is the glow of sparks over a night sky. Heart is warm is her affection for her friends. Day is loud is the noise of the daytime. Engine steaming is power and movement. Four of the five belong to the railway, and one does not, which is worth noticing when a question asks you to sort them.

Why those five and not others

Because each is short enough to lift out and use elsewhere. A bonfire throws cinders red into the dark. A market is loud. The phrases work away from the poem, which is what makes them worth learning.

Tone, and how to answer it

Tone is the attitude behind the words. Here it is excited, enthusiastic and joyful, and content fits the lines about her friends. A reader can defend any of those from the text.

The tone words that do not fit

Worried, critical and serious. Nothing in the poem complains, nothing judges, and nothing is heavy. Rejecting three wrong words is half of a good answer to a tone question.

Imagery, and the five senses

Imagery is language that builds a picture for a sense. Day is loud is hearing. Cinders red is sight. Engine steaming is both, and a reader can hear and almost feel it. Naming the sense is the quickest way to prove that a phrase is imagery at all, and it takes four words.

Where the imagery of this poem sits

Mostly in the ear. A whistle, voices, an engine, a shriek. For a poem about something seen from miles away, remarkably little of it is actually looked at.

The train as symbol

A symbol is itself and also stands for something larger. This train is a real train with real cinders, and it also stands for adventure and opportunity. Both at once, which is what a symbol means.

And what the poem does not use

There is not one simile in the twelve lines. Nothing is said to be like anything else. Every picture here is given directly, which is why the poem feels quick for all the work it is doing.

Scenario:

Three pupils answer the same four-mark question on the whistle. Lavanya writes one line: this is personification. Mohit writes that it is personification and that it makes the poem more interesting and beautiful to read. Nandita writes that it is personification. A shriek belongs to a living thing in fear or excitement, she says, and giving that sound to a steam valve makes the train seem alive across all those miles. She adds that a reader therefore hears a creature calling rather than machinery working. The marks come out as one, two and four.

Analysis:

The three answers differ in one thing only, which is how far past the label they go. Lavanya has the device right and has written nothing about the poem; a label is a fact about the technique, not about this poem. Mohit adds a sentence that would fit any device in any poem ever written, which is why it gains one mark and not two. Interesting and beautiful are judgements, and a judgement is not an effect. Nandita names the device in three words and then does the actual work: what shrieking normally belongs to, what happens when it is given to a machine, and what the reader consequently hears. Every one of those sentences is about THIS whistle in THIS poem, and none of them could be moved to another text without being rewritten. That is the test worth remembering. If a sentence in your answer would survive being pasted into an answer about a different poem, it is not earning anything.

Activity:

Take any four-mark device answer you have written and underline every sentence that would survive being moved to another poem. Rewrite those sentences so that they could not be.

Title:

Four columns for twelve lines

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

The sense column fills up faster than the device column, and most of it says hearing. The effect column is the only one that could not be copied into an answer about another poem.

A rhyme scheme is written with letters, one for each new sound, so ABAB means the first and third lines share a sound and the second and fourth share another.

Imagery is not only about sight. A phrase can appeal to hearing, touch, taste or smell, and this poem leans almost entirely on hearing.

A symbol differs from a metaphor: a metaphor says one thing IS another, while a symbol is itself and also stands for something larger.

The rhyme scheme — A B A B, and B is always -ing — Away and day, speaking and shrieking. The first and third lines rhyme, the second and fourth rhyme, and the second pair ends in -ing in all three stanzas.

Answering a device question — Name it, then say what it does — Personification, three words. Then the effect: a machine is given a living voice, so the train sounds urgent. The second part carries the mark.

A family of loud words

The poem’s whistle shrieks, and shriek has relations. Seven of them are set in this chapter, and they are not interchangeable, because each one carries a feeling as well as a volume.

Yelling, and its cousin

Yelling is shouting loudly, usually in anger or excitement. Hollering is just as loud and carries no feeling whatever. A shopkeeper hollers at a street; a brother yells at a brother. Both would be heard from the same distance, and only one of them tells you anything about the person doing it.

Why that pair matters

Because it shows what these words are actually for. If loudness were the whole story, English would not need both. The difference between them is entirely about what is going on inside the person.

Screaming

A cry of fear or excitement. It is the one of the seven that fits fear best, and it is why a frightened person in a story screams rather than yells. Note that excitement appears in two of the meanings, which is why a crowd at a match can be doing either.

Wailing

Crying loudly with grief or sorrow. Nothing else in the list carries mourning, so a wail in a description tells a reader at once that somebody has lost something. It is the most specific of the seven, and the one to spend most carefully.

Bawling and whimpering

Bawling is crying loudly and out of control, which is what a small child does over a dropped ice cream. Whimpering is the opposite end: soft, low, broken, and almost finished. Neither word will take the other’s adverb. Nobody bawls softly, and nobody whimpers uncontrollably, which is a useful thing to know about the pair.

The two of them together

A toddler who bawls and then whimpers has been through a whole feeling in two words. That is what owning the family buys: a sequence instead of a single loud noise.

Screeching, which is the odd one

It is about pitch, not volume and not feeling. High, thin and piercing. A gate screeches, a brake screeches, a parrot screeches, and not one of them is upset about anything.

So how do you choose?

Ask what the person feels before you ask how loud they are. Angry or excited, yell. Afraid, scream. Grieving, wail. Out of control, bawl. Nearly done, whimper. Nothing in particular, holler. High and thin, screech.

Now the letter c

The poem has cinders in it, pronounced with an s. Cat is pronounced with a k. Same letter, two sounds, and which one you get depends entirely on the letter that comes next.

The soft c

Before e, i or y, c says s. City, cell, cycle, decide, receive, cinders. Three letters to remember, and they cover every soft c you are likely to meet.

The hard c

Before a, o or u, c says k: cat, cake, cut. Before another consonant it says k: clock, cry. And at the end of a word it says k: music, panic.

Why the rule is about the next letter

Because the same word can hold both sounds. Concert begins hard, because an o follows, and its second c is soft, because an e does. The word has not changed its mind; the letters after each c are different. Learn the rule and a word you have never seen is settled in a second. Learn a list and you are stuck the moment you leave it.

Two more worth checking

Circle begins soft and ends hard: an i after the first c, an l after the second. Bicycle has a soft c and then a hard one in seven letters, for the same reason.

And one that looks like an exception

Echo. The c is followed by an h, which is a consonant, so the sound is hard. The rule holds; the spelling is just doing something else at the same time.

The diamante, line by line

Seven lines. A noun. Two adjectives. Three -ing words. A line of four nouns or a short phrase. Three more -ing words. Two more adjectives. A second noun.

What the shape is for

The lines widen to the middle and narrow again, which is where the diamond comes from. And the two end nouns are opposites, so the fourth line is the hinge where one idea turns into the other.

Writing one that works

Choose the two nouns first, and choose a real opposite. Then write the fourth line, because it is the hardest. The adjectives and the -ing words are easy once the hinge is in place.

Scenario:

A pupil writes four sentences about a street at six in the evening, and uses one of the seven words in each. A shopkeeper was yelling to attract customers. A boy was hollering at his friend across the road in sudden anger. A toddler who had dropped an ice cream was whimpering uncontrollably. His mother calmed him and after a while he began bawling softly. Everything in the paragraph is grammatical, nothing in it is misspelt, and a reader cannot picture any of it. Her teacher hands it back with two of the four words circled and the other two swapped.

Analysis:

Every one of the four is the wrong member of the family, and the pupil has made the same mistake twice in two different directions. The shopkeeper is calling out to a street, which is hollering; yelling would make him angry at his customers. The boy is suddenly angry, which is yelling; hollering makes him casual, which contradicts the rest of his own sentence. Then the pair at the end are simply the wrong way round. Bawling is loud and out of control, which is what a child does the moment the ice cream lands in the dust. Whimpering is soft, low and nearly finished, which is what he does once his mother has got to him. Written the right way round those two sentences give a reader a whole feeling in sequence, from the first howl to the last broken breath. Written as they are, each word fights the adverb beside it: uncontrollably with whimpering, softly with bawling. That clash is the useful signal. If the adverb you want to add is arguing with the verb, the verb is the wrong one.

Activity:

Write four sentences using four of the seven words, and add an adverb to each. Then try swapping the verbs round and see which pairs become impossible.

Title:

A diamante, built from the outside in

Safety:

None needed.

What You Notice:

Line four is much harder than the six around it, and it is the line that decides whether the poem is a poem or a list. Written last, it never works.

The c rule comes from Latin by way of French, which is why English spells both city and cat with the same letter for two different sounds.

A diamante poem was invented in 1969 by an American teacher, Iris McClellan Tiedt, as a way of teaching parts of speech through shape.

Screech, shriek and scream are all old words that imitate the sound they name, which is what onomatopoeia means.

Soft and hard c — E, I, Y make C say S — Those three letters soften it: city, cell, cycle. Anything else - a, o, u, a consonant, or the end of the word - leaves it hard, as in cat and uncle.

The seven sound words — Angry, afraid, sad, shrill, casual, soft, uncontrolled — Yelling, screaming, wailing, screeching, hollering, whimpering, bawling, in that order. Learn the feeling and the word follows.