Luke+G's+-+Night+Ride

The Night-RideBy Kenneth Slessor The poem __The Night-Ride__ is written by the poet Kenneth Slessor. It is about when he is travelling on a train, and witnesses a few soldiers catching the same train. It is a vivid and realistic poem, but very descriptive to keep the readers engaged and mystified. In the first few lines of the poem, Slessor depicts the train and the hectic hassle and bustle on the train station. He brings realism into the poem by personification such as how he talks about the train as if it was a real living thing through the phrase of "Engines yawning".

I also think that the poem and title is a metaphor for things in life that worry or frighten society and the readers as it portrays the feelings of darkness and insecurity through "Night-Ride". For the poet Kenneth Slessor I think this has a main feature and purpose, which is war. The poem is a metaphor of war like "out of the gaslight, dragged by private fates. Their echoes die." To show how devastating war turned out as the soldiers knew they might die.

The author Kenneth Slessor, was involved as a war correspondent in the Second World War. He knew what it was like to go to war, and the feelings that went along with it. He knew what the trains that took the soldiers to war were like, he knew what the fellow soldiers looked and felt like, as he was there as it happened.

Gas flaring on the yellow platform; voices running up and down; Milk-tins in cold dented silver; half-awake I stare, Pull up the blind, blink out - all sounds are drugged; the slow blowing of passengers asleep; engines yawning; water in heavy drips; Black, sinister travellers, lumbering up the station, one moment in the window, hooked over bags; hurrying, unknown faces - boxes with strange labels - all groping clumsily to mysterious ends, out of the gaslight, dragged by private Fates, their echoes die. The dark train shakes and plunges; bells cry out, the night-ride starts again. Soon I shall look out into nothing but blackness, pale, windy fields, the old roar and knock of the rails melts in dull fury. Pull down the blind. Sleep. Sleep Nothing but grey, rushing rivers of bush outside. Gaslight and milk-cans. Of Rapptown I recall nothing else.
 * __The Night-Ride:__**