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Sir John Betjeman's Poetry, by title

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  • A Bay In Anglesey
    The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide
    Slaps at the rocks the sun has dried,
    20 lines
  • A Shropshire Lad
    The gas was on in the Institute,
    The flare was up in the gym,
    36 lines
  • A Subaltern's Love Song
    Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
    Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
    53 lines, 1 comment
  • An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield
    High dormers are rising
    So sharp and surprising,
    50 lines
  • Back From Australia
    Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
    The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
    14 lines, 1 comment
  • Business Girls
    From the geyser ventilators
    Autumn winds are blowing down
    20 lines
  • Christmas
    The bells of waiting Advent ring,
    The Tortoise stove is lit again
    55 lines, 4 comments
  • Cornish Cliffs
    Those moments, tasted once and never done,
    Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.
    30 lines, 1 comment
  • Dawlish
    Bird-watching colonels on the old sea wall,
    Down here at Dawlish where the slow trains crawl:
    10 lines
  • Death In Leamington
    She died in the upstairs bedroom
    By the light of the ev'ning star
    32 lines
  • Devonshire Street W.1
    The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
    Shuts. And the sound is rich, sympathetic, discreet.
    16 lines
  • Diary Of A Church Mouse
    Here among long-discarded cassocks,
    Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
    61 lines
  • Dilton Marsh Halt
    Was it worth keeping the Halt open,
    We thought as we looked at the sky
    20 lines
  • Executive
    I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
    I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
    24 lines
  • False Security
    I remember the dread with which I at a quarter past four
    Let go with a bang behind me our house front door
    34 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
  • Five O'Clock Shadow
    This is the time of day when we in the Mens's ward
    Think \
    16 lines, 4 comments
  • Guilt
    The clock is frozen in the tower,
    The thickening fog with sooty smell
    24 lines
  • Harrow-On-The-Hill
    When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
    And electric trains are lighted after tea
    25 lines
  • How To Get On In Society
    Phone for the fish knives, Norman
    As cook is a little unnerved;
    20 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
  • In A Bath Teashop
    Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
    Let us hold hands and look
    6 lines
  • In Westminster Abbey
    Let me take this other glove off
    As the vox humana swells,
    42 lines, 1 comment
  • Indoor Games near Newbury
    In among the silver birches,
    Winding ways of tarmac wander
    64 lines
  • Inexpensive Progress
    Encase your legs in nylons,
    Bestride your hills with pylons
    48 lines
  • Ireland With Emily
    Bells are booming down the bohreens,
    White the mist along the grass,
    54 lines
  • Lenten Thoughts Of A High Anglican
    Isn't she lovely, "the Mistress"?
    With her wide-apart grey-green eyes,
    28 lines
  • Loneliness
    The last year's leaves are on the beech:
    The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
    20 lines
  • Meditation On The A30
    A man on his own in a car
    Is revenging himself on his wife;
    23 lines, 1 comment
  • Middlesex
    Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
    Runs the red electric train,
    36 lines
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