Summary
The beginning of this stanza echoes the start of the previous one. The speaker reassures the listener that, though on certain nights people may not feel faithful or able to pray, they are able to have a religious experience without conscious effort. On these occasions, the truth simply "enters our hearts," occurring effortlessly. The speaker calls this a "small familiar pain," implying that it is familiar, rewarding, and at the same time somewhat uncomfortable. Just as the previous stanza offered first an overarching statement and then a specific example, so does this one. Here, the example the speaker offers is of a man who listens to the sound of a train. Its rhythm, which sounds like the Latin chanting of a Catholic service, reminds the man of his childhood.
Analysis
This stanza in many ways echoes the previous one. It begins with a statement asserting that, despite the problems with traditional prayer, prayerful or spiritual experiences are possible and even unavoidable. It then offers an example of a person who has such an experience. But this stanza burrows deeper into the emotions established in the first, creating a sense of greater urgency, darkness, and depth. This difference becomes apparent from the first phrase—"Some nights" rather than the previous stanza's "Some days." This doesn't just evoke darkness and quiet. It also offers more specificity. "Some days," with its broader idiomatic applications, can be read as synonymous with "sometimes." The phrase "some nights," however, would never be used to mean "sometimes": it's a reference to a specific set of moments and conditions. This simple phrase thrusts us as readers into the mind of someone who feels faithless despite their best efforts. It gives a sense, however small, of the duration and concreteness of these faithless moments. Likewise, the process previously described as "a prayer utters itself" is here described, in an identical spot in the stanza, as "the truth enters our hearts, / That small familiar pain." This later description contains more physicality and sensation. The somewhat abstract process of spiritual connection described early in the poem seems more difficult and hard-won here.
The example Duffy provides in this stanza, meanwhile, is of a man who is stopped in his tracks by the sound of a train. What makes this description so fascinating is the phrase "the distant Latin chanting of a train." Someone casually reading the poem might not even notice how odd, even ironic, this turn of phrase is: rather than hearing a train and being reminded of the Latin chanting of his youth, the man is reminded of his youth because of the train's Latin chanting. That is to say, here, it's not simply that the man hears a train and then is reminded of his youth, and of the religious services he used to attend. Instead, the train itself actually sounds like a religious service. It's a resemblance that exists in the real world, not just a tenuous connection made in the man's mind. This is a subtle difference, but an important one. The speaker makes clear that these moments of prayer and spirituality aren't purely internal. Instead, they are prompted by moments of real, preexisting beauty in the world. Maybe the man is struck by the sound of the train because he happens to have had a religious childhood, but the sound of the train is in itself a thing of beauty, music, and emotional power.
