The beauty of a young person's railcard?
O little card, whose paper bears the key
To kingdoms sleeping past the window-glass,
How sweetly cheap the distant world may be
When iron roads invite the heart to pass.
At dawn, the rails like silver rivers gleam,
And fields unfold beneath a tender sky;
The waking towns dissolve into a dream,
While clouds, like wandering islands, wander by.
What pilgrim needs a gilded, winged steed
When three small years are bought for such a sum?
Thou grantest youth the liberty to speed
Wherever restless thoughts may wish to come.
To seaside towns where winter waters sigh,
To ancient streets where bells awake the stone,
To friends whose faces wait beneath the sky—
Thou makest far-off places almost known.
Yet brief is youth, and briefer still the fare
That marks our golden age with twenty-five;
Soon shall the years demand their heavier share,
And full-priced trains remind us we survived.
So keep, dear card, thy place among the things
That made the young heart feel the world was wide:
A little passport to enchanted wings,
A plastic token for the countryside.