I Like to See It Lap the Miles,
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 sides, 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.
I Like to See It Lap the Miles, - fact Summary
Dickinson's Train Fascination
This short lyric vividly personifies a locomotive, portraying its movement as animalistic, proud, and almost divine while also strangely domesticated. The poem traces a train lapping miles, feeding at tanks, climbing and squeezing through landscape, hooting and neighing, then returning “punctual as a star” to its stable. The energetic, paradoxical voice compresses industrial power and everyday routine into a single, concentrated image. It reflects Emily Dickinson’s mid-19th-century fascination with trains and the way technological forces intruded on rural American life.
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