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Sir John Betjeman's Poetry, by first line

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  • Back From Australia
    Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
    The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
    14 lines, 1 comment
  • Dawlish
    Bird-watching colonels on the old sea wall,
    Down here at Dawlish where the slow trains crawl:
    10 lines
  • The Last Laugh
    I made hay while the sun shone.
    My work sold.
    6 lines
  • Seaside Golf
    How straight it flew, how long it flew,
    It clear'd the rutty track
    24 lines
  • Loneliness
    The last year's leaves are on the beech:
    The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
    20 lines
  • Mortality
    The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
    Shiver and shatter and fall
    20 lines
  • Winter Seascape
    The sea runs back against itself
    With scarcely time for breaking wave
    24 lines, 1 comment
  • Dilton Marsh Halt
    Was it worth keeping the Halt open,
    We thought as we looked at the sky
    20 lines
  • Inexpensive Progress
    Encase your legs in nylons,
    Bestride your hills with pylons
    48 lines
  • Middlesex
    Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
    Runs the red electric train,
    36 lines
  • The Planster's Vision
    Cut down that timber! Bells, too many and strong,
    Pouring their music through the branches bare,
    14 lines
  • The Olympic Girl
    The sort of girl I like to see
    Smiles down from her great height at me.
    28 lines, 3 comments
  • A Shropshire Lad
    The gas was on in the Institute,
    The flare was up in the gym,
    36 lines
  • How To Get On In Society
    Phone for the fish knives, Norman
    As cook is a little unnerved;
    20 lines
  • Westgate-On-Sea
    Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate,
    I will tell you what they sigh,
    28 lines
  • A Bay In Anglesey
    The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide
    Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,
    20 lines
  • Cornish Cliffs
    Those moments, tasted once and never done,
    Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.
    30 lines, 1 comment
  • Slough
    Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
    It isn't fit for humans now,
    40 lines, 1 comment
  • South London Sketch
    From Bermondsey to Wandsworth
    So many churches are,
    24 lines
  • An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield
    High dormers are rising
    So sharp and surprising,
    50 lines
  • Business Girls
    From the geyser ventilators
    Autumn winds are blowing down
    20 lines
  • Death In Leamington
    She died in the upstairs bedroom
    By the light of the ev'ning star
    32 lines
  • Guilt
    The clock is frozen in the tower,
    The thickening fog with sooty smell
    24 lines
  • The Hon. Sec.
    The flag that hung half-mast today
    Seemed animate with being
    40 lines
  • Verses Turned...
    Across the wet November night
    The church is bright with candlelight
    48 lines
  • In Westminster Abbey
    Let me take this other glove off
    As the vox humana swells,
    42 lines, 1 comment
  • The Cottage Hospital
    At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
    A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
    18 lines
  • Trebetherick
    We used to picnic where the thrift
    Grew deep and tufted to the edge;
    40 lines
  • Upper Lambourne
    Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
    Up the ivy climbs the sun,
    24 lines
  • Myfanwy
    Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,
    White o’er the playpen the sheen of her dress,
    28 lines
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