Summary
The speaker in "Train Journey" describes traveling by train through a landscape that takes on metaphysical significance. This speaker is enclosed in a cold sleep and is dazzled by the moon. The train is a confusing medley of sound and darkness, but the speaker is able to see what the moonlight illuminates. Under the moon's "cold sheet," the body of the passing landscape is visible to the speaker.
The speaker personally addresses the land as the "country that built my heart" and compares the small trees growing on colorless slopes to the way poetry moves: "articulate and sharp / and purposeful."These trees grow under the stars and the dry wind that blows in diagonal currents. The speaker addresses particular trees, telling box-tree and ironbark to clench down their strength. She wants the trees to use their roots and violently break the the virgin rock. Continuing on with her address, the speaker tells the trees to take breaths of dew from the darkness flying past as the train moves. By claiming their strength and taking breaths of dew from the surrounding darkness, the trees will be able to reanimate what is not living.
The speaker beseeches the trees to grow like a wise skin over blind rock, and for their thin branches to dance under the barren height of the sky. After a pause communicated through ellipses, the speaker suddenly awakes. She sees the trees from her dreams. They are dark and small, and they figuratively burn into flowers that the speaker considers lovelier than the white moon.
Analysis
"Train Journey" by Judith Wright describes the harshness of the Australian landscape and the speaker's concern for the wellbeing of this environment. The poem is composed of three quatrains followed by two couplets, all written in free verse with some loose, slant rhymes. The form somewhat resembles an English sonnet (three quatrains and a concluding couplet), which often expands upon problems one experiences in love. For Wright's speaker in "Train Journey," the love is for the drought-afflicted Australian land.
The title "Train Journey" makes it clear that the speaker is traveling on a train, which means that there is a physical barrier between the speaker and the landscape. The first line of the poem continues to create a distance between the landscape and the speaker, who is "Glassed with cold sleep." This line refers to the speaker's consciousness; it is not clear whether she is awake or asleep. This imbues her descriptions of the landscape with a dreamlike quality. The sibilance used here helps to blur the line between reality and dreams.
The speaker is "dazzled by the moon," whose light illuminates everything that the speaker sees throughout the poem. This dazzling gives an air of magic, which again helps to convey the speaker's dreamlike consciousness. The train is characterized as chaotic in the second line, which reads, "out of the confused hammering dark of the train." A mix of sonic and visual imagery contrasts the chaotic darkness of the train with the dazzling moonlight outside. This light is described as "the moon's cold sheet," which connects back to the speaker's "cold sleep" in the first line. The moonlight covers everything like a comforting light blanket and allows the speaker to see outside the train.
Using the second-person voice, the speaker addresses the land in an intimate way in the fourth line. Here, the speaker sees "your delicate dry breasts, country that built my heart." This evokes the role of motherhood, with the land being the mother and the speaker being a child. However, the phrase "delicate dry breasts" suggests that the land is suffering because of drought. The alliteration of /d/ used here only emphasizes the drought's severity. If a mother's breasts are delicate and dry, that means that her body is unable to nourish her children. For the environment, this means that there is not enough water and soil nutrients to sustain life. At this point in the poem, the speaker communicates worry both for the environment itself and for what its condition means for the survival of humanity.
Wright often engages with the environment to explore the concepts of self in her poems, and in "Train Journey," the Australian landscape has the power to shape the speaker's identity as the "country that built [her] heart." This places the poem in conversation with Dorothea Mackellar's "My Country," in which the Australian land is also personified as a woman. Mackellar was an Australian poet and fiction writer born in 1885. "My Country" is widely known, and Wright alludes to Mackellar's refrain "Core of my heart, my country!" in "Train Journey."
In the second quatrain, the speaker describes "the small trees on their uncoloured slope," where the lack of color is likely a result of the night's darkness. Even the moonlight cannot illuminate specific colors, just shapes and outlines. The speaker states that these trees "like poetry moved, articulate and sharp / and purposeful." The ordering of the phrase "like poetry moved" has an ancient feel to it, suggesting timelessness. This section is rhythmic and rich with imagery, which provides the force of Nature with a strong voice in the poem, capable of speaking clearly and sharply. The trees are compared to poetry despite their small size and the adverse conditions they face.
The speaker turns her attention upward to describe the vast realm of the sky above the trees. These trees move beneath dry wind and stars. The dryness of the Australian landscape exists both in its ground and in the sky, where the air moves without moisture. The "flight of air" could be a result of the movement of air as the train travels past. But as Wright relies heavily on personification in this poem, the word "flight" also suggests conscious departure. Either way, the assonance in the phrase "dry flight" gives the impression of being out in nature and weathering the winds that move in "crosswise currents." Through the sounds in the poem, the reader can feel what Wright is describing.
In the third quatrain, the speaker addresses box-tree and ironbark (two particular personified trees) and tells them to "clench down" their strength. Both these trees are native to Australia and are types of Eucalyptus. The ironbark has very rough bark that resists fire and heat, and the box-tree similarly has thick and coarse bark. Both are strong and sturdy, which contrasts with the earlier descriptions of the "small trees." It seems that the speaker is viewing the trees here in a new light. The imperatives in this section communicate a sense of urgency that is both violent and hopeful.
The speaker instructs the trees to "Break with your violent root the virgin rock," which has a violent and sexual connotation. It has already been established in the poem that the land is a personified woman, and the image of trees breaking "the virgin rock" can be considered phallic and forceful. Despite this violence, the alliteration of the /v/ and /r/ connect the "violent root" to the "virgin rock" by way of sound, which transitions to a different tone in the next lines. The speaker instructs the trees to "Draw from the flying dark its breath of dew / till the unliving come to life in you." This gives an air of hope born from violence. The "breath of dew" suggests life and water, which contrasts with the drought and struggle evoked earlier in the poem.
In the first of the final couplets, the speaker evokes both mental and bodily intelligence when she beseeches the trees to be a "skin of sense" over "the blind rock." This suggests that the landscape is not alive without the trees. The speaker's relationship to the landscape and to the trees in particular has changed over the course of the poem. At first, the speaker notices the fragility of the trees in the context of the harsh landscape. She then implores the trees to be strong and rise up. However, despite the strength of the trees, their branches move in a "slender dance" "under the barren height" of the sky. These details are a reminder that the sky is vast and dry in comparison to the living branches of the trees. Even if box-tree and ironbark are sturdy species, they are still vulnerable in the grand scheme of things.
Ellipses are often used to indicate hesitation or trailing thoughts, and in "Train Journey" they are used at the end of the fourteenth line to represent a change in the speaker's consciousness. Whereas before she was "Glassed with cold sleep," now the speaker awakens and observes the landscape with different eyes. She sees "the dark small trees that burn / suddenly into flowers more lovely than the white moon." Despite the change in the speaker's consciousness, this section retains the vivid and dreamlike quality of the rest of the poem. Now apparently awake, the speaker sees the trees transform into something alive and more beautiful even than the light that illuminates them. The suddenness with which this occurs suggests that the trees are communicating their strength and vitality to the speaker. As a result, the entire landscape comes alive in the speaker's realization of and appreciation for its beauty.
