Comparing Emily Dickinson And Walt Whitman's To A Locomotive In Winter
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Poets Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman have both written poems using the powerful and once revolutionary form of transportation, trains. Renowned poet Walt Whitman wrote the poem “To a Locomotive in Winter”. This poem concentrates more specifically on the locomotive of a train, which is the engine car that carries the rest of the train. The reclusive poet Emily Dickinson wrote the poem “I like to see it lap the Miles” which is more of a viewing of the entire train described as one would watch an animal, such as a young child would watch an animal in a zoo exhibit. Both poets use the trains to create metaphors and imagery that help describe the tones and themes of the aforementioned works. As previously mentioned, the famous poet Walt Whitman wrote the 25…show more content… In the poem, the reader realizes from the dialog and tone that the speaker feels an admiration for the locomotive, almost as if the speaker were wanting to aspire to be as great as the “fierce-throated beauty”(line 18).Throughout the poem, the speaker personifies the locomotive referring to it as “thee” and “thy” in almost every line of the poem. Personifying the locomotive allows the speaker more freedom to speak of the locomotive as if the poem were a love letter to a beautiful woman from an admirer. The way the locomotive is described is as if it were a luxurious vessel. The speaker admires “Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides” (lines 4 & 5). This creates the vivid image in the reader’s head of a magnificent piece of machinery, something to behold and be awestruck by. The speaker appreciates the locomotives strength, “Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day, declining” (lines 2 & 3). The speaker admires the locomotives power and