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 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:

Apart from that, readers can also find the use of consonance, the repetition of consonant sounds in closely placed words. For instance, there is a repetition of the “z” sound at the end of “fairie s,” “witche s,” “Bridge s,” “house s,” “hedge s,” and “ditche s” in lines 1 and 2. Personification Night Journey” by Theodore Roethke — Read how it feels while traveling by train at midnight. Roethke beautifully describes the nocturnal beauty of nature in this poem.

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. 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’ 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.

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. to support reading of individual poems – the image can act as a visual reminder of topics, themes or narratives for students while they are completing work on poems; 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: Each scene slides past the poet so fast that he cannot notice each one of them totally. That’s why he says that the things he sees are like a momentary glimpse or clips of a motion picture.This device is used in a number of instances; in the first stanza, there is a repetition of “and” throughout. Such repetition is also called polysyndeton. The recurrence of the conjunction signifies a sense of continuity. In the second stanza, Stevenson uses the word “Here” at the beginning of alternative lines until line 5. Rhetorical Exclamation There are eight programmes in this series . Each of the first 6 programmes profiles a different contemporary children’s poet who introduces and then reads a selection of his or her work.