In English Poem "Travel" ; In the first Stanza the Speaker talks about two different sounds, what are these Sounds ?
Answers
Travel’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay is a short three stanza poem that is divided into sets of four lines, or quatrains. These sets of lines follow the rhyming pattern of abab cbcb dbdb. The poet has chosen to repeat the ‘b’ rhyme throughout this piece in an effort to create a sense of unity and continuity throughout the poem.
Millay has also chosen to make the second line of each quatrain, the longest, or at least almost to the longest. This establishes a visual and auditory rhythm that will help the reader move effortless from line to line.
Summary of Travel
‘Travel’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay speaks of one narrator’s unquenchable longing for the opportunity to escape from her everyday life.
The poem begins with the speaker stating that from where she lives, there is a railroad track “miles away.” It is a feature in her life that is a constant. Although she cannot physically see it every moment, it is always there weighing on her mind.
As the poem continues it becomes clear that the speaker has developed an obsession with the train and where it might take her. She can hear the sounds it makes all day, even over the sounds of the many voices around her. The speaker dreams about the train, and pictures it perfectly as she sleeps. By the end of the piece it becomes clear that she is uninterested in where the train is going, as long as it will takes her somewhere new.
Analysis of Travel
Stanza One
The poem begins with the speaker describing a part of her everyday life that is not directly before her, but is always in her sight, a railroad track. The track is miles from where she lives but it weighs on her mind throughout her days. The passing trains are like unshakeable totems that follows her from moment to moment. The presence of the railroad tracks is a reminder of possibilities that are so close, but still out of her reach.
The first line describes the fact that these tracks, which are so important to the speaker’s being, are “miles away.” They are not something that she sets eyes on everyday, but they do come into her thoughts more often than not. At the present moment the speaker is in the middle of another noisy day of her life. She is experiencing a sense of claustrophobia around the “loud…voices speaking” wherever she goes.
The voices that surround her work in two different ways, first, they are an irritant that she is unable to escape, and second, their volume, and the fact that she is still able to hear the train as it goes by, proves how important they are to her. The final two lines describe this second fact quite eloquently. The speaker says that of all the trains that go by, there is not one that she doesn’t hear. She is always able to pick out the “whistle shrieking” in amongst the chaos of her everyday life.
One important point of setting to note at this time is that the speaker does not say there is a railroad station near her, only a track. There is no where for the train to stop even if she could board it. It is always moving past her.
Stanza Two
In the second stanza the speaker continues to discuss the importance of this moving train to her everyday life. The speaker is thinking on her own propensity to obsess over the presence of the train, and its ability to make its way into every moment of her waking and sleeping hours.
Answer:
This has been taken from travel