Night Mail
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
Commentary
When I need the text of a poem or indeed to check any poetic reference I generally turn first to “Wondering Minstrels”.
The other day I needed a copy of “From a Railway Carriage” by R. L. Stevenson. It was for a music lesson where strong rhythms were being illustrated under the theme of trains. And that poem of course was the obvious choice.
Naturally I found it on this wonderful site but was rather surprised to find that another ‘railway’ poem Was not in your list. This poem “Night Mail” was written by W. H. Auden for a film advertisement for “British Rail”.
The rhythms and rhymes are wonderfully evocative of the railways in the steam age and bring back to me memories Of railway journeys on which my sisters and I worked out phrases to fit the rhythms we could hear as the wheels clicked over the joins.
I offer this for the collection partly because it has so many memories for me and partly to ensure that it is Available when I next need to use it.
— Bob
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Sarah Bennett · 19 June 2003
I remember hearing this peom as a child, and the rhythm of it stays with me still. As a footnote, a couple of weeks ago the Royal Mail here in the UK announced that they were going to stop sending any letters by train - so it looks like it’s the end of the Night Mail.
A MARTIN · 22 June 2003
Hi, Great to see this poem amongst your collection. It dates back a bit before the days of British Rail, which lasted from 1948-1994, being made in the 1930s. The film was one of the documentaries popular then and made on behalf of the Post Office. Auden was asked at the last moment to write a poem, as up to then there was noting in the film about what the letters the train was carrying were about or how they might affect people’s lives. In those days we were still,justifiably, proud of our railways in Britain, and they were not the sad joke they have become in recent years. And now even the Travelling Post Office is doomed!!!
Tony Martin
TPO 1837-2003 RIP
BThomasburton · 16 July 2003
It was very nostalgic to come across this poem by W H Auden. I remember the British Rail film which brought back memories of my days as a LMS signalman. Thank you
Tom Burton
Steve Kane · 7 January 2004
I looked this up tonight as I have been longing to see (and hear) again the Post Office Public Information film that the poem accompanied, but so far without luck, as someone else has said, once heard the rhyme of the poem remains with you for life! lets hope the TV shows it again soon esp as the service it extols is being axed,
Mike Grinter · 21 January 2004
Anyone know where you can get the film on video or dvd or even just the audio?
Chris Bolton · 24 August 2004
Mike,
I saw your comments on the page
www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1281.html for the poem Night Train by W.H.Auden asking for an audio of the poem. I was wondering if you ever tracked down a copy?
Cheers,
Chris.
t112jch.freeserve.co.uk · 10 October 2005
Saw the video at National Raiway Museum in York. Was not available for publice purchase though.
Denise Burton · 5 January 2006
The Night Mail poem really invokes the sound’s of a steam engine’s sound so powerfully in your head that you smell that train too. Magic! Denise Burton
William Mckeating · 3 September 2006
Noticed a few interested in the film….try this link peeps
Bart Connolly · 29 November 2006
Have you ever read “Junk Mail train”? :) - Bart Connolly
This is the Junk Mail crossing the border
Delivered by truck now, that’s the order
None of it wanted, all of it waste
All of it tinged with commercial distaste
Delivering catalogues all unsolicited
Names on the mailing list slyly elicited
‘Yearly subscription’ that’s the refrain
‘Take out a loan or a time-share in Spain’
Unwanted brochures shrouded in plastic
Thousands of leaflets bound by elastic
All come unbidden, a waste of a trip
Bound for the landfill, bound for the tip
All come by lorries pounding the highways
Blocking the ring road and clogging the by-ways No more will the Night Mail arrive at the station De-railed by the forces of privatisation
‘Victorian problem - Victorian answer’
That is an insult to the service they ran, sir Imagine old Isambard taking this tack
‘Sorry we’re late sir, leaves on the track’!
Now, gone is the romance
Gone is the snobbery
The twenty-first century’s Greatest Train Robbery So while we’re asleep the postman is driving
And the profits of shareholders quietly thriving To bring us material for which none of us asked To redress the balance is how we are tasked
Here comes the postman rounding the block
Here comes the postman, here comes his knock
With quickening heart I leap from my bunk
‘Anything interesting, dear?’
‘Nothing, just junk
Philipbrooks8 · 7 January 2007
After many years of searching I now have a copy of one of the greatest poems EVER written.Long may it be remembered.
Philip Andrew Brooks
PRow792188 · 25 February 2007
There are eight lines missing from the text you quote (and from all the other versions I’ve seen on the internet) - I only realised this when I compared it with the version recorded by Nigel Hawthorne in 1996 (on Helios label) and found they didn’t tally. The full version begins as follows:
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.
Thro’ sparse countries she rampages,
Her driver’s eye upon the gauges.
Panting up past lonely farms
Fed by the fireman’s restless arms.
Striding forward along the rails
Thro’ southern uplands with northern mails.
Winding up the valley to the watershed,
Thro’ the heather and the weather
and the dawn overhead.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
[It then continues as you have it.]
Marion O'Byrne · 12 April 2007
I recited this poem by heart when I was about 13 for the schools parents night and have always loved it. Amazingly enough, many of the words are still in my memory and I’m now 58!! My English teacher encouraged me to sound “like a train” when doing the recitation and I believe I did it quite well. I went to the library to look for the poem, trying to remember the parts that I had forgotten, and never realized the history of it (used for a commercial) so couldn’t find it in any book. I came home and did a search for it on the internet and low and behold, there it was. Great poem!!!
Marie Francis · 26 August 2007
This poem takes me back to my childhood. We learnt it at school and the sound it makes sound just like a train when a lot of voices say it together. Wonderful memories! Thank you for sharing. I wish I could get a copy of the video with the spoken naration.
Marie Francis