Classic Poem

Everything changes:
Time deranges
Men and women and mountain ranges
Why the Devil can't Time let Well enough alone?
He no longer stoops to set his " Nil obstat " on
Trusted, tried and comely things than he seeks to change,
Wither, age and alter them and the best derange.
This has happened just of late to the Galway train
That with passengers and freight crossed the central plain
Pulling out from Dublin town that Liffey's stream divides
West to old grey Galway town where Corrib meets the tides.
It strains at first, then settles down and smoothly rolls along
Past villages with Gaelic names that sweeten on the tongue:
Clonsilla, Lucan and Maynooth beside the long canal
Where yellow-centred lilies float and no one comes at all,
The long canal that idle lies from Dublin to Athlone,
To Luan's Ford: but no one knows who may have been Luan,
The Royal Canal that joins two towns and makes of him a dunce
Who holds that nothing can be found in two places at once:
A long clear lane of water clean by flags and rushes rimmed,
Where, crimson-striped, the roaches steer, and, by the lilies dimmed,
The greenish pikes suspended lurk with fins that hardly stir
Until the Galways train comes on and shakes each ambusher.
The lovely hills are left behind; but soon the rising sun
Will overtop the mountain range and make the shadows run.
The light that flushes the hills was low;
But now it gathers to overflow
And shadow each bush on the central plain
And gather the dews and catch the train.
And light the steam
In its morning beam
Making a fugitive rainbow gleam.
Past walled Maynooth
Where they teach the Truth
In the meadow called after Druidical Nooth.
Puff, puff!
That's the stuff
As if there weren't white clouds enough!

Like a charging knight with his plumes astream
The train comes on with its sunlit steam,
Past fields where cows are chewing the cud
To Mullingar where the Square Mill stood,
Where the cattle-dealers with rough red skins
And gaiters buttoned across their shins
Wait for another train; they wait
For cattle-drovers to load the freight
Of blunt-nosed cattle with tousled coats
Bound for the East and the English boats:
Cattle-dealers replete with knowledge
That is not taught in an English college.
It blows
And goes,
A whale that feels
The pistons stabbing its driving wheels.

It reaches Moate where a king lies still
Under the weight of a man-made hill.
On and on, until, quite soon,
It will come to the ford that was held by Luan,
Where, as in Spenser's pageantry,
The Shannon " spreading like a sea "
Flows brightly on like a chain of lakes
Or linked shields that the morning takes:
The lordly stream that protected well,
When jar-nosed Cromwell sent " to hell, "
The Irish nobles who stood to fight
That Bible-bellowing hypocrite.

From the bridge you can see the white boats moored,
And the strong, round castle that holds the ford.
Over the bridge it slowly comes,
The bridge held up on its strong white drums,
To enter Connaught. And now, Goodbye
To matters of fact and Reality.
Ballinasloe where the hostings were,
Ballinasloe of the great horse fair
That gathers in horses from Galway and Clare,
Wherever the fields of limestone are:
Mayo and Boyle and Coolavin
Between the miles of rushes and whin
And mountains high in a purple haze,
Streams and lakes and countless bays
Of Connemara where still live on
The seaside heirs of the Sons of Conn.
Then Athenry where the kings passed by
From whom was named the Ath-na-Righ.
It rests for a moment at Oranmore,
A square grey castle protects the shore.
The Great Shore, limit of Galway Bay;
And Galway is only six miles away!

The engine-driver can wipe the oil
From his forehead and hands,
For his well done toil
Is over now; and the engine stands
Only a foot from the buffer-stop
(He eased her down till he pulled her up).
Oh, see the children jump about
As doors are opened and friends come out
With paper parcels. What endless joys
Are hidden within those parcels of toys!
The county ladies in English tweeds,
With leathern faces fox-hunting breeds,
And shoes that give them a look of men,
Have come to the station " just to look in. "
But never an officer home on leave
Is seen; instead, they only perceive
The rakel, card-playing boys debouch
And pay up their losses with search and grouch.
Oh, what a wonderful Noah's ark!
Lady Phillipa of Merlin Park,
Holding her parasol half up the handle,
Is back from Daly's of Dunsandle.
Where gold-headed Daly delights the gazers
As he leads the field of his Galway Blazers.
The Station Master opens a door
And clears a passage for Morty Mor,
For Morty Mor is known to own
The principal works of Galway town.
He is not one of the county set,
(Though he helps them out when they lose a bet)
His saw-mills hum and he sells cement,
Potash and lime to his heart's content.
The workers he sacks on Saturday night
Are back on Monday morn contrite;
In spite of his temper, deep at the core
The heart's all right in Morty Mor.
That little boy lost is found again;
He ran away to the end of the train,
For all he can taste in his youthful hour
Of splendour and terror and speed and power:
The harnessed hates of water and flame,
The engine brings with its seething steam.
The platform now is empty again;
And empty stands the Galway train.
(Strange that nobody came to call
On the lonely men in the urinal.)
Land that is loved in ballad and song,
Land where the twilight lingers long,
May you be crossed and crossed again,
Forgetting the bus and the aeroplane,
By nothing worse than the Galway train.
Who shall tell how, when I'm dead and gone,
Gaily the Galway train came on?
How it puffed with pride on a road of its own;
How it whistled, Waeshael ! to each nearing town;
How brightly its brass and its copper shone?
It seemed to be painted to match the scene
Of boglands brown and the trees between
With its coaches brown and its engine green.
It brought the towns where it stopped good luck,
Goods, the result of a bargain struck;
And it never ran over a cow or a duck..

Now all is changed for an overplus
Of passengers packed in a reasty bus,
A crowd that stinks and the air befouls,
And children pewk as the full bus rolls:
(A popular government plays to the masses
And that's what they get who abolish the classes)
Lady Phillipa whose share of charity
Fails when it comes to familiarity,
Lady Phillipa, her feelings hurt
Because Democracy means such dirt,
Is sitting, a most disdainful rider,
With the man from her gate-lodge sitting beside her.
The Law of Change would be just a jest
Were we sure that all change were a change for the best.