This is only to prepare us to receive the final metaphor in the last stanza of the poem. The train itself is portrayed not as a mere machine, but as a living being. Till the end of the third stanza the train's movement and the distances it covered and the places it crossed are vividly presented. The words 'crawl' and 'chase' add picturesqueness to the movement of the train. Between the sides of a quarry or a tunnel, the train claw's groaning and complaining in horrid hooting noise. It then cuts and trims a distant quarry in the mountains. The train continues its journey and travels around a mountain range and then takes peeps with an air of contempt and superiority into the huts around the mountains. The speaker appreciates the train's speed and power as it goes through valleys, stops for fuel, then "steps" around some mountains. Once it is filled with water, it then takes a prodigious step forward. The speaker likes to gaze at the movement of the train, the way it laps the miles and licks the valleys up and how it stops to take water. In its purpose, design and tone, the poem is remarkably similar to Whitman's "To a Locomotive in winter." The poem also illustrates Emily Dickinson's habit of charging words with the new meanings. The metaphor is appropriate, because it suggests the superhuman power of the train. In the poem Emily Dickinson presents the Railway train in the metaphor of a mythical horse. But she describes with a sense of wonder, the beauty of the locomotive, without ever mentioning it. She does not describe the thing, the Railway train itself. In this riddle like poem, Dickinson never mention the name of the subject, but referred to as 'it'.
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