John Betjeman Poems

Walking from school is a consummate art:
Which route to follow to avoid the gangs,
Which paths to find that lead, circuitous,
To leafy squirrel haunts and plopping ponds,
...

Golden haired and golden hearted
I would ever have you be,
As you were when last we parted
Smiling slow and sad at me.
...

We used to picnic where the thrift
Grew deep and tufted to the edge;
We saw the yellow foam flakes drift
In trembling sponges on the ledge
...

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.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
...

The flag that hung half-mast today
Seemed animate with being
As if it knew for who it flew
And will no more be seeing.
...

Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
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I made hay while the sun shone.
My work sold.
Now, if the harvest is over
And the world cold,
...

From Bermondsey to Wandsworth
So many churches are,
Some with apsidal chancels,
Some Perpendicular
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Across the wet November night
The church is bright with candlelight
And waiting Evensong.
...

The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
Shiver and shatter and fall
As the steering column of his comfortable Humber
Batters in the bony wall.
...