Welcome to ~PoetryToTheMasses' weekly feature.
I ONLY HAVE ONE LEFT AFTER THIS!
Each week I will feature two poem suggested by deviants with some information about the poems and the poets. One poem is from deviantART itself, and the other is not.
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The Night Mail - W. H. Auden
Suggested by ~QuenWrites
IThis 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, 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 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 a bedroom gently shakes.
II
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
III
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to 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 on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the 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.
IV
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
This poem was written for the ending of a 1936 documentary about a London, Midland and Scottish Railway mail train, as was music by Benajmin Britten.
Wystan Hugh Auden was an Anglo-American poet. He was born in England 21 February 1907 and later moved to America and became an American citizen in 1946. However, he died in Vienna in Austria 29 September 1973. Probably his most well-known poem is "Funeral Blues", famously featured in "Four Weddings and a Funeral".

To Be NumbI gaze through the glass
To the last rays of light
And the long shadows cast
As dusk turns into night
Hands cling to the chain link
Still struggle to stand
I know what you may think
And I know what I am
A broken man
Still stealing these breaths
Because I can
I tried to hold on
If not but for your sake
But you walked away
Left my heart here to ache
Now it just
Reluctantly beats
It's this feeling inside me
And my heart is its keep
It's a feeling that
Is known only to some
Not everyone knows
What it's like to be numb...
To the last rays of light
And the long shadows cast
As dusk turns into night
Hands cling to the chain link
Still struggle to stand
I know what you may think
And I know what I am
A broken man
Still stealing these breaths
Because I can
I tried to hold on
If not but for your sake
But you walked away
Left my heart here to ache
Now it just
Reluctantly beats
It's this feeling inside me
And my heart is its keep
It's a feeling that
Is known only to some
Not everyone knows
What it's like to be numb...
- ~Invoking
Suggested by ~FadingAngel213
I gaze through the glass
To the last rays of light
And the long shadows cast
As dusk turns into night
Hands cling to the chain link
Still struggle to stand
I know what you may think
And I know what I am
A broken man
Still stealing these breaths
Because I can
I tried to hold on
If not but for your sake
But you walked away
Left my heart here to ache
Now it just
Reluctantly beats
It's this feeling inside me
And my heart is its keep
It's a feeling that
Is known only to some
Not everyone knows
What it's like to be numb...
If you like this poem, please
the original!
Artist's comments:
"Even if you feel nothing, you're feeling something.."
"Even if you feel nothing, you're feeling something.."
This poem was submitted January 12, 2012.
~Invoking, or Ryan, is a hobbyist writer from the United States and has been on deviantART since May 3, 2011.
News
#Poetry-To-The-Masses is looking for affiliates. If you are a writing-related group which accepts poetry, please send us a request.
P2TM is offering 50 points to whoever has suggested the most poems or song lyrics by September 1 2013. More info: [link]
~QuenWrites is writing an anthology and would like to feature work by poets on deviantART. More info: [link]
If you have any poetry-related news or are running a contest accepting poetry entries, please send a message to ~PoetryToTheMasses.
Next feature: 22/23 Jun