Geoffrey Wall
They have sung you of old romances, of rapier and
powder and ruff,
They have written of earlier happenings, and sure they
were strange enough,
‘But the song I would try to sing you is of a later age;
c/f song of the fMan and the tArtifex, the machines that
has made.
Of a glinting stretch of metals, a distant rising
drone,
A glimpse of glowing engine, smoke-box and stack
and dome,
The string of lighted Pullmans, the click of a clos-
ing rail,
The swaying, fading tail-light, the track of the
Midnight Mail.
Of the trembling, rumbling racer, the ribbon of
empty trail,
The pulsing roar of the engine, the drone of the
speed-made gale;
The crouching, goggled figures, the wind that cuts
the breath,
The eddying, smoking dust-cloud, the track of the
Driven Death.
Of the slowly sinking liner, a threshing,- crippled
wreck;
The fires drawn and flooded, the slanting, crowded
deck;
The lurching wireless cabin, the hissing, crackling
spark
That flings the frantic message across the troubled
dark.
Of the youngest and swiftest science, the strain-
ing, cambered plane,
The thrust of the great propellers, the Mind that
holds them tame;
The swooping, dipping volplane, the planes that
warp and bend —
The reeling, wheeling landscape — the crash, and
then …. the End.
Of these, though the men who made them scarce
knew what they had wrought,
Shaping the fierce brute metal, with pain and peril
fraught,
To each perchance a vision beyond ambition’s goad,
The song of the locomotive, the call of the open
road.
They have sung you of old romances, of days when
the world was young,
Of knights and ladies and gallants, of many strange
things they’ve sung;
And Romance — it passed with chivalry— forever dead
and gone,
But in spite of steam and petrol, Romance has still
lived on.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem isn’t nostalgic for the past—it finds romance in the modern world, in machines, speed, and technology. It pushes back against the idea that adventure and excitement belong only to knights and swords and old-fashioned heroism. Instead, it argues that the present—full of roaring engines, racing cars, sinking ships, and airplanes pushing the limits of flight—has its own kind of thrill, just as gripping as the stories of the past.
The imagery is mechanical but not lifeless. The poem paints scenes of trains disappearing into the night, cars tearing across empty roads, and ships struggling against disaster. There’s movement in every line, a sense of urgency, as if the machines themselves are alive, their engines pulsing like hearts. The descriptions don’t shy away from danger either. The “Driven Death” of the racecar and the final crash of the plane show that this new world of metal and speed comes with real risks.
The poem also acknowledges the people behind the machines—the ones who build, design, and control them. They might not have fully realized what they were creating, but they were shaping something powerful, something that would change the world. Even though the tools have evolved, the human spirit—the drive to push boundaries, to explore, to conquer the unknown—hasn’t disappeared.
The final lines challenge the idea that romance died with knights and castles. Just because the world runs on steam and petrol now doesn’t mean it’s lost its sense of wonder. The poem argues that adventure still exists, just in a different form. It’s not in sword fights or royal courts anymore—it’s in the rush of the train, the roar of the engine, the peril of the open road.