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From: "Jean Rice" <>
Subject: [IGW] "Trains In the Distance," Louis MacNEICE (b. Belfast 1907)
Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 20:48:02 -0700

Louis MacNEICE was born in 1907 in Belfast although his parents were originally from Connemara, in the West of Ireland. Family moved to Carrickfergus due to the appointment of his father as rector for the anglican church. Trains were a fixture of the Antrim landscape of Louis MacNeice's childhood, and here is one of his earlier poems:

TRAINS IN THE DISTANCE

Trains came threading
quietly through my
dozing childhood
Gentle murmurs nosing
through a summer
quietude...
And so we hardly
noticed when that metal
murmur came.
But it brought us
assurance and comfort all
the same,
And in the early night
they soothed us to sleep,
And the chain of the
rolling wheels bound us
in deep.

-- Louis MacNeice (1907-1963)

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• [IGW] "Trains In the Distance," Louis MacNEICE (b. Belfast 1907) by "Jean Rice" <>