Why I love Walt Whitman's To a Locomotive in Winter

Walt Whitman’s “To a Locomotive in Winter” was published in 1881. One thing that I find interesting about the date of this poem is it helps you understand why Whitman wrote it. Since the industrial revolution had come and passed the years afterwards lead to inventors improving the technology and inventions that had been already created. Just as other inventions locomotives transformed as time progressed. First starting with wooden rails then to iron rails and lastly using steam powered engines.

The reason I love this poem so much is how Whitman chooses specific vocabulary to describe the locomotive and the noises it produces. It is not just that he uses technological vocabulary but he uses it in an artsy way to make one see the beauty of the machine. A perfect example of this is in line 4 where it states “Thy black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel,” This is a great example because you can see how he uses a color such as golden to enhance how he explains the way the brass looks.

In this poem Whitman uses most of your senses to portray a train that is driving in a snowy storm. You can hear the roar of the engine that is in the distance and how you can see the head light in the front as well as the smoke cloud flowing out of the smoke stack. You then can feel the swift wind and snow falling around.

Whitman also personifies the train cars by being “obedient, (and) merrily following,” I believe he decided to use personification on certain parts of the train such as the carts and its whistle to give it more of a personal feel. He focuses on the train’s noises the most and compares them to a song. As if the train is singing, laughing, and causing a commotion as it is driving through the snow storm.

            The poem ends expressing how a train is free, and just follows its tracks as it crosses the country “o'er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.” I love this thought of being able to keep traveling with no real destination, just going from town to town.

http://www.daypoems.net/poems/2131.html