Animals
Though sleuth-like readers will soon figure out that the mystery creature referred to here is actually a train, Dickinson uses an extended metaphor to depict the train as a kind of super-powerful,...
Consumption (eating, drinking)
The general theme of the first stanza is eating and drinking – the train is a ravenously hungry creature, and as it travels, it consumes and consumes. There's some interesting mixed feelings here...
Astronomy/Celestial Bodies
While this concept only shows up very briefly in the poem's final stanza, it strikes us as an interesting one. Dickinson's comparison of the train to living, earthly creatures (like a horse) puts i...
Landscape
Trains move. They move through cities, they move through the countryside, and they move through small little towns in the middle of nowhere. Even though "The Railway Train" is a short poem, we find...