In the 1930s, a group of British film­mak­ers, led by John Gri­er­son, under the aegis of the GPO Film Unit, was behind an influ­en­tial out­put of doc­u­men­tary films that became known as the British Doc­u­men­tary Film Move­ment. Of the films it pro­duced, the best known and most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed was Har­ry Wat­t’s and Basil Wright’s Night Mail (1936), fea­tur­ing music by Ben­jamin Brit­ten and poet­ry by W H Auden. Auden wrote his poem espe­cial­ly for the doc­u­men­tary, which fol­lows the Lon­don, Mid­land and Scot­tish Rail­way (LMS) mail train from Lon­don to Scot­land. The poem acts as a sort of verse com­men­tary over the footage of the steam loco­mo­tive, and helped to estab­lish the doc­u­men­tary as some­thing of a clas­sic.

Auden’s lan­guage is inge­nious; glo­ri­ous use of metaphor and clever rhymes, four-beat lines rhyth­mi­cal­ly deliv­ered to mim­ic the pump­ing of the rods and pis­tons of the loco­mo­tive. You can almost hear the train chug­ging along. The per­son­i­fied train is effi­cient, reli­able, stead­fast, trust­wor­thy – there is a remit, after all, to sell the mer­its of the postal ser­vice, and Auden sat­is­fies the spec. As the pace picks up to match the accel­er­a­tion of the train, the rhymes become quick and punchy, and become inter­nal rhymes (Let­ters of thanks, let­ters from banks) rather than line-end rhymes; a rapper’s delight.

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 long for let­ters,
And none will hear the post­man’s knock
With­out a quick­en­ing of the heart,
For who can bear to feel him­self for­got­ten?