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Sir John Betjeman's Poetry, by popularity

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  • Norfolk
    How did the Devil come? When first attack?
    These Norfolk lanes recall lost innocence,
    26 lines
  • I.M. Walter Ramsden OB. March 26, 1947, Pembroke College, Oxford
    Dr Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary to-day
    He’s dead.
    30 lines
  • Summoned by Bells (excerpt)
    Walking from school is a consummate art:
    Which route to follow to avoid the gangs,
    14 lines
  • Indoor Games near Newbury
    In among the silver birches,
    Winding ways of tarmac wander
    64 lines
  • Verses Turned...
    Across the wet November night
    The church is bright with candlelight
    48 lines
  • The Irish Unionist's Farewell To Greta Hellastrom In 1922
    Golden haired and golden hearted
    I would ever have you be,
    43 lines
  • South London Sketch
    From Bermondsey to Wandsworth
    So many churches are,
    24 lines
  • Dilton Marsh Halt
    Was it worth keeping the Halt open,
    We thought as we looked at the sky
    20 lines
  • On A Portrait Of A Deaf Man
    The kind old face, the egg-shaped head,
    The tie, discreetly loud,
    38 lines
  • The Hon. Sec.
    The flag that hung half-mast today
    Seemed animate with being
    40 lines
  • 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
  • Dawlish
    Bird-watching colonels on the old sea wall,
    Down here at Dawlish where the slow trains crawl:
    10 lines
  • Mortality
    The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
    Shiver and shatter and fall
    20 lines
  • Guilt
    The clock is frozen in the tower,
    The thickening fog with sooty smell
    24 lines
  • The Last Laugh
    I made hay while the sun shone.
    My work sold.
    6 lines
  • Lenten Thoughts Of A High Anglican
    Isn't she lovely, "the Mistress"?
    With her wide-apart grey-green eyes,
    28 lines
  • Devonshire Street W.1
    The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
    Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.
    16 lines
  • Inexpensive Progress
    Encase your legs in nylons,
    Bestride your hills with pylons
    48 lines
  • Back From Australia
    Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
    The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
    14 lines, 1 comment
  • Felixstowe, Or The Last Of Her Order
    With one consuming roar along the shingle
    The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
    40 lines
  • In A Bath Teashop
    Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
    Let us hold hands and look
    6 lines
  • Winter Seascape
    The sea runs back against itself
    With scarcely time for breaking wave
    24 lines, 1 comment
  • 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
  • Upper Lambourne
    Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
    Up the ivy climbs the sun,
    24 lines
  • Slough
    Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough
    It isn't fit for humans now,
    40 lines, 1 comment
  • Loneliness
    The last year's leaves are on the beech:
    The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
    20 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
  • Ireland With Emily
    Bells are booming down the bohreens,
    White the mist along the grass,
    54 lines
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