"This is the night mail" - WH Auden
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- Опубліковано 6 жов 2024
- In the documentary "Night Mail" (1936), John Grierson narrates the opening scene with WH Auden's poem of the same name, "Night Mail." Auden wrote the poem specifically for the film.
Visit my channel for more films that quote poetry.
(No copyright infringment intended. I don't own the content of this video and make no money from it.)
To make the poem's rhythm better sound like a chugging train, Auden's text was slightly altered for the film. Its original version is provided here. This is one of my very favorite poems. I teared up the first time I heard it.
Night Mail
WH Auden
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb --
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her black-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides --
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can hear and feel himself forgotten?
"Shoveling steam over her shoulder"....never has there been a more emotive description of a steam engine at speed.
White steam
Listen again >> Shoveling WHITE steam over her shoulder - now that's emotive. Adjectival imagery...
@@noushitaisa This was a big deal back in the day. The physical effort of two men in the cab against the gradient, the heavy load, the conditions etc with time at a premium. Businesses and individuals relying on their efforts. This film captures that perfectly.
lyrically better then the majority of mainstream rappers today lofl 1:32
Ik ahaha
I agree hehe
All of them. No living rapper could lay claim to being an actual poet.
You cannot be well versed in hip-hop, son@@GamerCall
poets just don't rake in the big bucks, since the masses don't like poetry.. They like horny bragging
This is pretty dank for 1936.
Ikr
Ik ahaha
Rap music back in my day
Yeah, coz the 1930s were a really light and carefree decade. A crushing Depression and heading into the biggest war in history. It is odd that the art wasn't lighter in general.
@@batmansarah6325 Good art is always a product of its time.
My grandma smoked opium to this.
lol epic comment. The poem is a bit surreal, indeed, as were many of his poems.
Audibly laughed at this
4 yrs young but brilliant comment 👏🏻😂😂😂😂
haha nice
Stare from the bushes at her blank faced coaches.
im so glad aphex twin sampled this and turned this into one of his songs
It's not just the reality of a rap from 1936, with crisp upper class elocution to the Queen's own English. It's the way that the music itself takes on a similar tone to much of rap music as well, that slight uncanny *d a n k* vibe as Auden lays down his rhymes. Worth a crown.
Dude could spit some rhymes. For real.
I've not seen dank styled like that since 2016
This is a top tier comment!
@@uzmamaya9304 What a top-tier compliment - thank you, Uzma. ☺
First watched this at junior school over 60 years ago. Thought it wonderfully exciting and began a life long love of poetry.
Me too!!!!!!!!!!
The best part is the third verse (starts at around 1;31). At the National Railway Museum in York, they have a screen that plays just that part, and there's a microphone and you have to try and say it as fast as the commentator. It is NOT easy!
Also, please tell me where's that microphone in the museum
1:31 for the moderns
SICKEST FLOW
nacho doggy bro this is poem
nacho doggy half of it is in free verse
@@saminatariq561 yea its poetry to the rhythm of a train moving, that's rap
WH auden spittin dat lethal shit, son!
Eminem don't got shit on ole Wentworth Hawthorne Auden
Damn that sheepdog diss was hard! He went in!
Last line is "For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?" I think.
MC Grierson spitting some Old School Britcore!
The drummer is playing the four beats of coach wheels over rail joints, the strings are playing the 'Royal Scot' class loco's three-cylinder exhaust, and there's a guy rapping pentameters over it all.
And, guess what - it works, brilliantly! What a classic.
Beautiful imagery and details from a bygone age...the "rap"is actually the metre of the words mimicking the clank of the wheels over the joins in the track.....
Rhythm
And
Poetry
Auden's poetic commentary was actually narrated by Stuart Legg. John Grierson provided the dawn sequence as the Night Mail descends into Glasgow and then he returns with 'Thousands are still asleep to round the film off
And it only took 80 years for Aphex Twin to sample it :)
whatever anyone says Auden invented rapping - utter genius!!
makes me smile every time
and a fabulous piece of poetry:)
me seeing this comment after 15 years
XD
Me and the missus were the ones fast asleep in that farmhouse. Completely missed out on all of this at the time. Slept right through we did. Sixty two year we worked that farm, and never once woke in the night. Never got so much as a postcard neither. Never needed to. Tim Berners-Lee used to stop in our barn every weekend when he was an adventure scout so we was on the internet since 1948.
Did you receive any postal orders though?
DROPIN Str8 barsz fam catch the mixtape wid this track dropen Sunday pure fire fuckin endless Savage no chill
+danermanerkider best comment ever
+danermanerkider oh my god im crying thats jokes
"But who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"
This was our life before the internet, kids
no..doing old fashion rap about trains
seriously, yeah imma go play some fortnite, seeya
Andrew Beadle I’m A Kid And I Already Know That And But I’m Thinking Why Most Of The People Watching This Like You Guys Don’t Know A Lot About Railways
I really don't understand this comment. Judging by your profile picture you are at least 40, steam engines were gone by the 70s though. Why do you feel the need to prove something anyway? Lets say you were around during the age of steam it doesnt mean you should try to prove that your youth was better because it had something which is honestly in better shape today than it ever was
@@MegaPikachu5 Sorry I Was Dumb Back Then Also Steam engines Are Still In Museums(And The Profile Pic Was Taken In The Internet So Sorry)
whoever remixes this will get massive youtube hits
David Hodges soundcloud.com/user18081971/nightmail-1
Public Service Broadcasting did it on their 2013 album Inform - Educate - Entertain :)
That's how I ended up here.
aphex twin
Public Service Broadcasting.
Saw this as a kid in the late 50's! Still awesome and the nostalgia buzz is amazing!
The second verse...:wow:
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to the Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
Thank you. Needed some lyrics for that fast bit. You did miss 'Notes from overseas to the Hebrides,' though.
the first rap song
ferrarif50sport its a poem not a rap
Olivia Smith not sure exactly what you're implying, but it's wrong.
Rap or not, this would not have been the first one.
Olivia Smith - You could class this as rap now.
Dunno, where do you draw the line between reciting a poem to a beat and rap music?
Rozzy Rozz - The word “Rap” describes this poem perfectly.
Here from Public Service Broadcasting's "Night Mail" song. Highly recommend!
"Birds turn their backs as she approaches, [and] stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches" - this is a Post Office sorting train with the windows blanked out.
Man...Eminem ain't got nothing on this
and they say white guys can't rap!
white people used rap before the creation of rap , in medevial talk fight , rap is not a music , its chant, there is chant in chinese era too
Shut up Mimi boki
I love this short poem of the LMS mail trains. It has a very beautiful vibe to it, following suit with the actual mail trains themselves. (although any train pulled by a Jubilee is a beautiful train!)
***** It changes throughout the video. I saw a Scot (deflectors), a Princess, and a Jubilee.
I Never tire of this short. Brilliant. Thanks for sharing. ;-)
This joint is fuckin' SICK, brahhh. Old school rhymes tight as piss.
Don’t let anyone tell you Aphex Twin is not enriching music… Richard is a genius
an english man from the '30s is a better rapper than 2 chains
Big up to my boy Grierson for this absolute tune, true fire in the booth rite here.
Certified BANGER! Finna bump this in my whip forreal
Love this poem.I remember learning this at school.
Anyone else coming from Aphex Twin?
λ
Me 😂
John Doe *(7\)
I was looking for this, which I've known for years. I saw the Aphex Twin remix and gave it a try, but it was physically painful to listen to, so I shut it off and returned to the original. The Public Service Broadcasting remix is pretty good.
Precisely.
The best song of all time without question 😍😍
So ahead of its time.. so cool to see the old photos of Scotland. love the rhythm scheme to emulate the climbing and then racing locomotive. brilliant. loved it.. pa
I don't know if anyone mentioned this in the comments, but Benjamin Britten composed the music for this film, including (yes) this section.
I always loved this poem from school days.
I am form my school days
I'd be bumping this if I was in the 40s
I love this poem idk why I think it’s cuz I’m English we had to sing it and done a vid and we got to watch it😍 my line was “Letters for the rich,Letters for the poor the shop at the corner,the girl next door”
I agree! This is on my playlist (my running one anyways)
WEIRD, I REMEMBER STEAM Trains WELL.
COLWYN BAY TO TAUNTON SCHOOL FROM 1954 UNTIL 1962.
6 TIMES A YEAR!
I MUST BE OLD..
FORTUNATELY I AM
STILL
MENTI COMPUS.
Terrific poem! Terrific use in a documentary!! Who else is here in 2020??
I used to fly along "the line" (route 24 in MA) to this on a routine basis. This song is, was and for ever will be the best song to leadfoot to.
I love the BBC English of the narrator, nowadays they don't care how they speak.
On the contrary, I believe that they want to sound more like the "common folk" these days.
The narrator has a Scottish accent.
The rapper is using RP though.
It just goes to show that the origin of hip hop isn't as cut and dried as people think, as there are loads of literary influences. I can include William S. Boroughs, W.H. Auden, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron, Percy Shelly, Ivor Cutler.
Poetry at its finest!!! 😱
‘Thousands are still asleep dreaming of terrifying monsters’...
😆
1:33 to 1:44 (letter of thanks.....letters from bank.....letters of joy from the girl and the boy.....receipted bills and invitation to inspect new stock or visit relation and appication for situation and timid lovers' declaration and gossip gossip from all the nation.....) this awesome
My whole class was laughing at 1:34😂
this was my fav poem during my school time
love from NEPAL
I'm here because a wikiquote page on devotion was selected randomly by it's algorithm when I wished to be on another page from Sartre's. This quote resonated with me and I got to his page:
I never write when I’m drunk. Why should one need aids? The Muse is a high-spirited girl who doesn’t like to be brutally or coarsely wooed. And she doesn’t like slavish devotion - then she lies. W. H. Auden, in W. H. Auden, The Art of Poetry No. 17 Interviewed by Michael Newman
I, curious, searched him on UA-cam.
😍 Extended version!! This is great, but 1:24 is gold!
Put it on speed 1.5
Just do it.
Put it on 2 speed 😂
And start at 1.31
put it on 2
*Nice.*
bro this is fire fr
Dat flow, omg bruh, shiet's str8 fire dope
Back when Glasgow was the Industrial capital of the world - largest factory in the world (Singer sewing machine factory), producing 1/3rd of the shipping of the world (by tonnage), the largest locomotive works in the world, the countless inventions from the Mackintosh raincoat and the first viable steam engine (watt engine) to the television and air conditioning (pioneered by Thermotank in Clydebank).
Not to mention the countless supplementary industries - from the world-famous Templeton's carpet firm which fitted out everything from Titanic to the White House to Shanks of Glasgow which produced the internationally exported ceramics.
What halcynoid days - it must have been quite a thing to see.
this should be in the charts
remember having to read this at school ...
True OG shit right here ! hahahah
Phenomenally exciting and nostalgic.
Bro why isn’t this on spotift
i don't know, but spotift is in competition with spotify, so who knows...
Rap is CULTURAL APPROPRIATION
+Joey Taylor it's hilarious because white people started rap with this, or perhaps an earlier predecessor
+Joey Taylor lol, this was the best laugh i had since days man
@@suseonhwa There was 'flyting' which was used by european tribes from the 5th to 12th century? Which is when two parties exchanged insults in a poetic manner with some rythym?
Time will never rust this engine, nor snatch from Auden his Rappers Crown.
1:56
*Written on paper of every hue. The pink, the violet, the white, and the blue.* 😝
That ice cold 30s flow ❄ 🥶
1:33. Bruh.......
The Trouble with Trains III...
we watched this in English class, and we were all vibing(even the teacher) lol. 1:32
One of the greatest videos of all time. Where's the original!? 😱
The sound is better than the longer one I have just heard.
aphex twin brought me here
james mcgaugh Encarta
Beautiful video (even can be say the Opera). What a huge progress during the 20th century! Whether it will be continued in the 21st century??? How amazingly fast the time flows. Still alive people who remember those gorgeous trains (and I'm among them). Fast Mail Express never delay. Only green light on all the way. No time for refueling and firebox cleaning. A new loco for replacement is ready and waiting on rails... Nice pictures from my childhood...
Soundtrack by Benjamin Britten!
This is so important! Should be in the video description...
yes agree @@samhaywoodmusic
One rapper Eminem is too afraid to diss
Where is the rest of this film, I remember the train going through the whole country
I have this poem in my School Book
I like this poem a lot
Sorry, forgot to add that the last line actually is "For who can BEAR TO feel himself forgotten?"
Been up that way many times. Before the motorway and dual carriageway the winding roads cross that trains track. Highest point before the descent to Glasgow is Shap. Very little has changed.
Ended up here thanks to Public Service Broadcasting Live at Brixton
This is the only thing I know off by heart
1936 Rap Song
Yeah
Drops harder than the dust bowl
Walter Cronkite could *NEVER*
1930s british canadian raps about the mail train
Canadian????
AFX.
Mr Trevor Brown. St Vincent st, Portsmouth 1940's
It doesn't get any better than that! British invented rap
straight fire cuh
I am learning about poems and we also have to make up new pace for this poem
Baron Verulam - spot on, your Grace!
Sick beats man
Thank you, added to a playlist...
Thanks for this! 12 Language really enjoyed it. Ben thought it was really really good at depicting the movement of a train