"an indulgent insensitive individual...insulated...from her immediate surroundings": surely that is the observing persona in this poem? After all, she is sitting in a passing railway carriage looking at the woman through a window. As for Cornford, her family were famously radical, so would not have objected to "metaphysical or political" involvements. Housman's adaptation reveals the underlying attitude of the speaker. I would like to think that Cornford herself was ironic about the "speaker" of the poem, but...
I agree that Cornford is a fine poet elsewhere, but (like T.E.Brown with "A garden is a lovesome thing, Got wot") she has been, perhaps unfairly, remembered for this. Perhaps minor poets, Laodicean poets, are more easily remembered for their poetic sins than their virtues.
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