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 […]

The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried, Too lazy, almost, to sink […]

She died in the upstairs bedroom By the light of the ev’ning star That shone through the plate glass window […]

Across the wet November night The church is bright with candlelight And waiting Evensong. A single bell with plaintive strokes […]

Here among long-discarded cassocks, Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks, Here where the vicar never looks I nibble through old […]

Up the ash tree climbs the ivy, Up the ivy climbs the sun, With a twenty-thousand pattering, Has a valley […]

This is the time of day when we in the Mens’s ward Think “one more surge of the pain and […]

How straight it flew, how long it flew, It clear’d the rutty track And soaring, disappeared from view Beyond the […]

When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley And electric trains are lighted after tea The poplars near the stadium are trembly […]

Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy, White o’er the playpen the sheen of her dress, Fresh from the bathroom […]

The first-class brains of a senior civil servant Shiver and shatter and fall As the steering column of his comfortable […]

The sort of girl I like to see Smiles down from her great height at me. She stands in strong, […]

Golden haired and golden hearted I would ever have you be, As you were when last we parted Smiling slow […]

At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town, A brick path led to a mulberry – […]

Oh would I could subdue the flesh Which sadly troubles me! And then perhaps could view the flesh As though […]

In the licorice fields at Pontefract My love and I did meet And many a burdened licorice bush Was blooming […]