The Express by Stephen Spender

It tracks a steam express train from the instant it departs the station until it hits full speed, appearing to become more than just a machine. Throughout the journey, Spender contends that the train is as stunning and impressive as anything found in nature or classic art.

Gendering ships and locomotives as female has been a traditional practice in English. However, Spender intentionally employs this convention to elevate the train—transforming it into a queen or a goddess gliding through a landscape that submits to her presence. This choice also infuses the poet's admiration with a more personal touch, resembling a love poem.

He suggests that death is the concealed first letter of the train's name — it's woven into the machine's very essence. While speed and industrial might are exhilarating, they inherently hold the potential for destruction. This ties back to the Romantic notion that true sublimity always harbors an element of danger.

Both, but mainly pro. Spender truly admires the train's strength and elegance. The reference to death at the end honestly recognizes the grim aspects of industrial modernity, yet it doesn’t overshadow the thrill. The poem captures both emotions simultaneously.

The most prominent techniques include personification (depicting the train as a living, female figure), extended metaphor (comparing the train to music and poetry), and the sublime (creating an overwhelming, almost intimidating beauty). He also employs a loose free verse that captures the train's growing rhythm.

Spender, Auden, MacNeice, and Day-Lewis all thought poetry should engage with the modern industrial and political landscape instead of slipping back into pastoral nostalgia. 'The Express' exemplifies this vision — it centers on a machine and discovers in it the same sense of grandeur that earlier poets saw in mountains or the sea.

It uses free verse and doesn't stick to a regular rhyme scheme, but you'll find some rhymes and half-rhymes popping up here and there, much like the rhythms of the train itself. As the poem unfolds, its energy grows, reflecting the train's increasing speed.

The Italian Futurists, particularly Marinetti, crafted manifestos that celebrated machines, speed, and industrial power as the ultimate expressions of beauty. Spender is clearly engaging with this tradition — the use of the word 'manifesto' in the poem's opening lines seems like a direct reference. However, unlike the Futurists, who enthusiastically embraced the machine age without question, Spender's poem presents a more nuanced view, incorporating the theme of death into the mix.