What are some meanings of the poem "Railway Station" by Rabindranath Tagore and how do auditory images contribute to the work's effectiveness?

Rabindranath Tagore’s poem “Railway Station” (as
translated by William Radice) is a meditation on the mutability – that is, the constant
changing and changefulness – of life on earth.

The very
title of the poem is paradoxical: a “Railway Station” is a place where trains visit and
depart, come and go: it thus is a static place full of constant movement. The speaker
visits the station not only early but also late in the day, whether as a passenger
himself or as a fascinated mere observer (1). He claims to love watching the movement of
the place (2), including both the movement of the trains and the movement of the
passengers (3-4). Interestingly, these mechanical and human movements are associated
with the natural back and forth movements of tides (5). A scene that might seem, to
other eyes, boring, unremarkable, or even depressing seems, to this speaker, in some
ways beautiful and intriguing.

The speaker finds the
constant flux of the railway station symbolic of the constant flux of many different
aspects of life, including the constant changes and developments of language (12-15).
Paradoxically, this very poem gives some permanence and stability to the constant
movement it describes. Thanks to this poem, the movement it depicts is forever frozen in
time and becomes symbolic of more important movements. Movement, in a sense, thus
becomes stable; what seems merely random is made meaningful by the speaker’s
meditations. The relatively equal line lengths of the poem (at least in the Radice
translation) contribute to this sense of stability and
solidity.

At various points, the speaker mimics the actual
sounds heard at a railway station. Thus, in lines 21-22 he reports
that

Bho – Bho
– blows the whistle,

Ruled by the clock’s division of
time.

By mimicking such
sounds, the speaker adds to the realism of the poem. He makes us feel as if we are
actually present at the station, but he also in some ways makes the poem seem almost
child-like, so that we see and hear the station almost with a child’s sense of fresh
perception. Moreover, the speaker often also creates an appropriately rapid sense of
movement and change in his own phrasing, as in the line “Succeeding, failing, boarding
or remaining” (25), in which the rush of verbs makes us experience, as readers, some of
the energy associated with the station.

Ultimately, the
speaker suggests that earthly life is ephemeral. It is not solid and unchanging but is
always flowing. Yet the present poem itself manages to give some real permanence and
meaning to the very flux it describes. Change, the speaker seems to imply, is not merely
pointless or chaotic. It can in some ways seem beautiful, and in any case it is deeply
woven into the nature of human existence and therefore must be confronted and
accepted.