The wilderness line

I blipped this old railway bridge in February 2011. Snce then not a lot has changed which is hardly surprising because it's been here over a hundred years and never a train has passed under it, unless perhaps a ghost one.

The bridge carries a small back lane across a shallow wooded valley and I doubt whether anyone crossing it in a vehicle realises it's there unless they are local. A spur of the existing railway line was intended to pass this way  but work stopped when World War One broke out and the scheme was abandoned.

The embankment that was raised to carry the railway track has become a green corridor lined with hazel, sycamore and alder trees. As I wander down it, the dog running in front, I wonder how many of the labourers who constructed it ever came back from the  killing fields.


From here through tunnelled gloom the track
Forks into two; and one of these
Wheels onward into darkening hills,
And one toward distant seas.

How still it is; the signal light
At set of sun shines palely green;
A thrush sings; other sound there's none,
Nor traveller to be seen --

Where late there was a throng.  And now,
In peace awhile, I sit alone;
Though soon, at the appointed hour,
I shall myself be gone.

But not their way:  the bow-legged groom,
The parson in black, the widow and son,
The sailor with his cage, the gaunt
Gamekeeper with his gun,

That fair one, too, discreetly veiled --
All, who so mutely came, and went,
Will reach those far nocturnal hills,
Or shores, ere night is spent.

I nothing know why thus we met --
Their thoughts, their longings, hopes, their fate:
And what shall I remember, except --
The evening growing late --

That here through tunnelled gloom the track
Forks into two; of these
One into darkening hills leads on,
And one toward distant seas?

(The Railway Junction  by Walter de la Mare)