Page 4 - LESSON NOTES-FROM A RAILWAY CARRIAGE

VOCABULARY: WORDS IN FOCUS

• Hedge- a boundary formed by closely growing bushes or shrubs
• Ditches - narrow channels in the ground for drainage alongside fields
• Clamber - to climb out of something using both hands and feet with difficulty
• Scramble - to make way over rough ground by using hands and feet hurriedly
• Brambles - prickly vines or wild shrubs
• Tramp - a homeless vagrant, vagabond, or beggar
• Stringing - arranging something in a string
• Lumping - bearing a heavy burden from one place to another

Poetic Devices: (To be written in the Eng CW Notebook)

Simile:
The poem “From a Railway Carriage” begins with a simile: “Faster than fairies” and
“faster than witches.” Stevenson describes how the fairies and witches are not as fast as the
train. This device is also used in lines 3 and 6:

• “And charging along like troops in a battle”

Metaphor: 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:

And here is a mill and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone forever!
Alliteration:
The repetition of a similar sound at the beginning of neighbouring words is called alliteration. It
is used to create internal rhyming. This device is used in the following instances:

“Faster than fairies, faster” (line 1)
“houses, hedges” (line 2)
“glimpse and gone” (line 16)

Personification:
In “Painted stations whistle by,” the stations are personified. The poet invests them with the
ability to whistle. It is the rail personnel who whistle when the train crosses each station. In the
second stanza, the “cart” is personified and depicted as lumping with man and load.

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SIS/Cl-VI/English/LESSON NOTES/From a Railway Carriage Page 4