MURIEL!

Well, I'm glad I read about the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster prior to reading the poem or else I would haven't known about that.  That being said, the speaker of the poem, it seems, is trying to steer the reader in a certain direction.  Just looking at the first five stanzas, there is a lot of talk about roads, cities, places to go, things to do, as if the speaker is telling the reader where to go, what to do.  Knowing about the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster it makes perfect sense.  Muriel specifically says, "This is a nation's scene and a halfway house."  She calls it a halfway house!  She uses the word "you" and "your" a few times in the first five stanzas as well.  I think this establishes a relationship that says that the speaker is speaking for the reader, as if it were the reader's own thoughts.  Or maybe the speaker is going so far as to persuading the reader that this is what they are thinking by saying "you" and "your."  Unlike Walt's poem, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", Murile uses the words "we" and "us."  Walt uses the word "I" a lot, thus separating the speaker and the reader.  The ending of Muriel's poem seems pretty positive considering that one stanza that goes, "all these men cry their doom across the world, meeting avoidable death, fight against madness, find every war."  She uses words such as open, desire, beginning, and ends the poem with unending love.  I think this speaks to some sort of feeling of regeneration or at least that one can occur if people are open to it.  Interesting how this poem is about the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster when just about a year later World War II happens.  I think you could almost read parts of this poem as a WWII poem.