I like to see it lap the Miles (585) by Emily Dickinson

Full Text

I like to see it lap the Miles –
And lick the Valleys up –
And stop to feed itself at Tanks –
And then – prodigious step

Around a Pile of Mountains –
And supercilious peer
In Shanties – by the sides of Roads –
And then a Quarry pare

To fit its Ribs
And crawl between
Complaining all the while
In horrid – hooting stanza –
Then chase itself down Hill –

And neigh like Boanerges –
Then – punctual as a Star –
Stop – docile and omnipotent
At its own stable Door –

Overview

Dickinson describes a train without ever naming it. The locomotive becomes a giant animal — lapping, licking, feeding, crawling, neighing — that devours landscape yet arrives punctually at its stable. The poem captures industrial America's ambivalence: the machine is powerful and obedient, prodigious and docile, omnipotent yet domesticated. The word "train" never appears.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-4

The creature "laps" miles and "licks" valleys — consuming distance like an animal drinking. It stops to feed at water tanks. The "prodigious step" introduces its enormous scale.

Lines 5-8

It steps around mountains with a "supercilious peer" into shanties — looking down on human dwellings with contempt. Then it pares a quarry to fit its body through. The landscape must accommodate the machine.

Lines 9-13

The lines shorten as the train squeezes through the quarry cut. It "complains" in "horrid – hooting stanza" — the steam whistle described as bad poetry. Then it chases itself downhill with gathered momentum.

Lines 14-17

It neighs "like Boanerges" (biblical "Sons of Thunder"), then arrives "punctual as a Star" — cosmic reliability. The final paradox: "docile and omnipotent." All that power, standing quietly at its stable door.

Themes

• Technology as animal
• Industrial power
• Domestication of force
• The machine in the garden

Literary Devices

Extended Metaphor

lap, lick, feed, crawl, neigh, stable — The train is described entirely through animal imagery — it's a horse, a cat, a creature — but never named. The riddle structure sustains the entire poem.

Oxymoron

docile and omnipotent — The train is simultaneously all-powerful and obedient — industrial force perfectly tamed by its schedule and tracks.

Allusion

Boanerges — Biblical reference to James and John, whom Jesus called "Sons of Thunder" (Mark 3:17). The train's whistle becomes prophetic thunder.

Historical Context

The railroad reached Amherst in 1853, transforming the town. Dickinson's father, Edward, was instrumental in bringing it there. She would have witnessed the locomotive's arrival as a child — a machine entering a pastoral New England landscape. The poem belongs to a tradition of American writers grappling with industrialization (Thoreau's Walden train, Hawthorne's "Celestial Railroad"), but Dickinson's approach is uniquely playful.