“We ran/Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street/Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence/The river’s level drifting breadth began,/Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.”
In the above lines from the first stanza, the speaker illustrates an image of natural harmony. Despite the rapid succession of images appearing as the train travels and the blinding effect of the windscreens (a British term for windshields), the river is united with the sky and the landscape of the county of Lincolnshire. This harmony falls apart later in the poem, when the images of industrialization interrupt and overtake the pastoral scenes. The train’s “running” is in contrast with its lazy pace in the beginning of the stanza.
“The women shared/The secret like a happy funeral;/While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared/At a religious wounding.”
In these lines, the speaker likens the aftermath of the weddings to two other Christian occasions, a “funeral” (though a “happy” one) and a “religious wounding” (perhaps a reference to Christ’s crucifixion or stigmata, the mystical manifestation of wounds emulating those of Christ.) The “happy funeral” is an oxymoron, referring to the death of single life (and the unification and rebirth into a shared life) that comes with marriage, while the “religious wounding” also refers to the traditional loss of virginity on the wedding night, during which a woman bleeds. In this manner, the speaker assigns this increasingly outdated wedding ritual a religious significance.
“and none/Thought of the others they would never meet/Or how their lives would all contain this hour.”
The beginning of these lines carries a double meaning: none of the couples think of their fellow newlyweds, whose lives run parallel to but separate from their own, but they also do not think of those they could later meet and have relationships with had they not married. In addition, the wedding parties do not contemplate the significance of sharing this brief moment together, after which they will likely disappear from each other’s lives. Only the speaker seems to be taking in the full meaning of the moment.
