Author: John Betjeman

Encase your legs in nylons, Bestride your hills with pylons O age without a soul; Away with gentle willows And […]

The kind old face, the egg-shaped head, The tie, discreetly loud, The loosely fitting shooting clothes, A closely fitting shroud. […]

The clock is frozen in the tower, The thickening fog with sooty smell Has blanketed the motor power Which turns […]

The flag that hung half-mast today Seemed animate with being As if it knew for who it flew And will […]

“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another- Let us hold hands and look.” She such a […]

Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate, I will tell you what they sigh, Where those minarets and steeples Prick […]

The sea runs back against itself With scarcely time for breaking wave To cannonade a slatey shelf And thunder under […]

Was it worth keeping the Halt open, We thought as we looked at the sky Red through the spread of […]

With one consuming roar along the shingle The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down To where its backwash […]

The last year’s leaves are on the beech: The twigs are black; the cold is dry; To deeps byond the […]

From Bermondsey to Wandsworth So many churches are, Some with apsidal chancels, Some Perpendicular And schools by E. R. Robson […]

Cut down that timber! Bells, too many and strong, Pouring their music through the branches bare, From moon-white church towers […]

Bird-watching colonels on the old sea wall, Down here at Dawlish where the slow trains crawl: Low tide lifting, on […]

The gas was on in the Institute, The flare was up in the gym, A man was running a mineral […]

The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet. The sun still shines […]