A RAILWAY JOURNEY

We’ve cleared the station—free at last

From darkness, din, and worry;

By red-brick villas, shady roads

And garden-plots we hurry.

And now green miles of pasture-land

Flit by, with budding hedges,

And far to Southward I can see

The purple mountain ridges.

My fellow-travellers pretermit,

Seeing there is no danger,

That anxious glance with which we greet

The presence of a stranger.

Whom have we? First, some man of means

(I guess), brow-wrinkled, dull-eyed,

His face the index of a soul

By cares unworthy sullied.

And then a lady, whom I deem

Some mask of Fashion merely;

And last, a maid of nineteen years,

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