by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
Faster than fairies, faster than witches
Language: English
Faster than fairies, faster than witches, Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches; And charging along like troops in a battle, All through the meadows the horses and cattle: All of the sights of the hill and the plain Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again, in the wink of an eye, Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles, All by himself and gathering brambles; Here is a tramp who stands and gazes; And there is the green for stringing the daisies! Here is a cart run away in the road Lumping along with man and load; And here is a mill and there is a river: Each a glimpse and gone for ever!
About the headline (FAQ)
View text with all available footnotesText Authorship:
- by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894), "From a railway carriage", appears in A Child's Garden of Verses, first published 1885 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Alys Eliza Bentley , "Song of the train", published 1923 [ unaccompanied voice ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Arthur Butterworth (b. 1923), "From a railway carriage", op. 41 no. ? [ speaker, chorus, semichorus, orchestra, and tape ], from Trains in the Distance [sung text not yet checked]
- by Frederica Elvira Gambogi (? - 1940), "From a railway carriage", published 1902 [ voice and piano ], from Child-Land [sung text not yet checked]
- by Henry Kimball Hadley (1871 - 1937), "From a railway carriage", published 1906 [ unaccompanied voices ], in the collection The Laurel Music-Reader [sung text not yet checked]
- by Ian Higginson (b. 1959), "From a railway carriage" [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Francis Alan Jackson (b. 1917), "From a railway carriage", published 1958 [ unison chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Robert Edward Jager (b. 1939), "From a railway carriage" [ soprano and piano, woodwinds, or chamber orchestra ], from A Child's Garden of Verses [sung text not yet checked]
- by Henry George Ley (1887 - 1962), "From a railway carriage" [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Oskar Morawetz (b. 1917), "From a railway carriage", 1985, from Souvenirs from Childhood, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Alec Rowley (1892 - 1958), "From a railway carriage", published 1963 [ unison chorus and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
- by Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson (1931 - 2003), "From a railway carriage", published 1968 [ high voice and piano ], from From a child's garden, no. 9 [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 121