In rail transportation the old-fashioned station Is rapidly passing away. A modern age this is and old edifices Become very quickly passé. The hard, greasy benches, the strange, aged stenches Which once filled the depot are gone; While smart airs and graces of steam-heated places Beguile us as time passes on. But still there's one splendid Old friend that I miss As over the country I rove; One spell now is ended And that is just this— The glow of the Coal Burning Stove, That ample and round-bellied Thick, iron-bound bellied Corpulent waiting-room stove! When frozen with driving—how good on arriving To shake off the sleet and the snow Of bleak January and steam in the merry Delight of that heart-warming glow! That stove filled its function at jerk-water junction, At tank and at desolate town; The winds might be pouring their drafts through the flooring But still you could bake yourself brown. With tears I remember The hours that I spent At Hickstown, Cold Creek, and Bear Cove, In bitter December; But warm and content Parked close to that Coal Burning Stove, That anthracite-fed-bellied Gorgeously red-bellied Competent waiting-room stove! What tales Rabelaisian I've heard on occasion In rough camaraderie there, While drummers were sitting with natives and spitting Straight into the open door's glare; I'm not one to weep "Oh! The old-fashioned depot!" Nor sigh that "Alas, it has passed!" But no modern heating can ever be beating The warmth that that Coal Burner cast. And so I am singing The glow that it threw, That travelers' rich treasure-trove; The heat it was flinging When winter winds blew, That marvelous He-Husky Stove; That potently pot-bellied Cherry-red-hot-bellied Brute of a waiting-room stove! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DREAM SONG: 2 by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR DECEMBER 31ST by LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE THE FLIGHT OF THE WAR-EAGLE by OBADIAH CYRUS AURINGER ASPIRATIONS: 1 by MATHILDE BLIND THE TREE BUDS by KATE LOUISE BROWN |