Two Travellers

One of us in the compartment stares Out of his window the whole day long With attentive mein, as if he knows, There is hid in the journeying scene a song To recall or compose From snatches of vision, hints of vanishing airs. He'll mark the couched hares In grass whereover the lapwing reel and twist: He notes how the shockheaded sunflowers climb Like boys on the wire by the railway line; And for him those morning rivers are love-in-a-mist, And the chimneystacks prayers. The other is plainly a man of affairs, A seasoned commuter. His looks assert, As he opens a briefcase intent on perusing Facts and figures, he'd never divert With profitless musing The longest journey, or notice the dress it wears. Little he cares For the coloured drift of his passage: no, not a thing Values in all that is hurrying past, Though dimly he senses from first to last How flaps and waves the smoke of his travelling At the window-squares. One is preoccupied, one just stares, While the whale-ribbed terminus nears apace Where passengers all must change, and under Its arch triumphal quickly disperse So you may wonder Watching these two whom the train indifferently bears.