The Railway Train

What kind of transportation is the poem about?

• a car
• an airplane
• a railway train
• a subway train

what does the poet describe over the course of the whole poem?

• the different parts of a train's journey
• the different parts of a train
• the different mountains a train travels through
• the reasons why a train is making a journey

Read lines 8-11. What is the train doing in these lines?

• going through an underwater tunnel
• making a hooting noise while going through a quarry
• sqeaking against the train tracks as it slows down
• reciting a poem as it continues its journey

The poem is comparing a train to a horse. Which words from the poem best support this conclusion?

• neigh and stable
• crawl and hooting
• lick and feed
• mountains and roads

What is the poem mostly about?

• a person who runs across mountains and valleys to get somewhere
• a train that takes a long journey to reach its destination
• a horse that runs around the country before returning to its stable
• the similarities and differences between trains and horses

Read the first stanza. Why might the poet have described the train as "feeding" itself? 

• to demonstrate that the train did not have an owner to feed it
• to show the reader that the train was hungry
• to make the train seem like an animal that could think and act for itself
• to expalin that the train was able to eat food

The entire poem is one long sentence. What might this syntax represent about the train? 

• that it took a long and winding journey without breaks
• that it was very long and made up of many train cars
• that it stopped often on its way to its destination
• that it probably was very tired after its long destination