Classic Poem

Travelling at night no man has any home
Beyond the station's melancholy dome.
The giant tired engine starts again
For homeless fields anonymous in rain,
Now it has gone. But that was not our train.
Even the kit-bag and the trundled can
Are cared-for and considered more than man
Who has been travelling since his life began.

His soul, uncomforted by cups of tea,
Envies the soul of the baby on his knee,
Escaped in peace from its small house of sense.
Even his grin for the barmaid was pretence;
And soon his cup will lose its tiny heat
Abandoned on the desert of a seat;
Even the bottom sip was hardly sweet
And held no hope; it tasted sad, of spoon.

O, if our journey's end were coming soon,
But will it ever come in a thousand hours?
We are the prey of adamantine powers,
Remote, uncaring, cold, yet easily crossed;
They may not punish us for being lost
If we remain their puppets, twitched and tossed,
They may not quite malevolently mind
Our presence here, if hopelessly resigned.