Ten words have been removed from the poem. Select the word that you think fits best in each gap, being prepared to justify your choice.
Not Adlestrop, no – besides, the name
hardly matters. Nor did I languish in June heat.
Simply, I stood, too early, on the empty platform,
and the wrong train came in slowly, , stopped.
Directly facing me, from a window,
a very, very girl leaned out.
When I, all instinct,
stared at her, she, all , inclined her head away
as if she’d divined the much life in me,
or as if she might spot, up platform,
some unlikely familiar.
For my part, under the clock, I continued
my with unmitigated pleasure.
And she knew it, she certainly it, and would not
glance at me in the silence of not Adlestrop.
Only when the train heaved noisily, only
when it jolted, when it slid away, only then,
daring and secure, she smiled back at my ,
and I, and , waved back at her .
And so it was, all the way down the hurrying platform
as the train gathered atrocious speed
towards Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire.