John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)

Sir John Betjeman (28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984) was a British poet and writer on architecture. He was born in Highgate, London, his surname indicating his Dutch ancestry. He left Magdalen College, Oxford without a degree due to lack of work which resulted in his failing his divinity exams. In his verse autobiography, Summoned by Bells (1960), Betjeman tells the story of his early life, up to his employment as a teacher at a preparatory school.

Later, Betjeman obtained employment as a journalist, before joining the civil service. It has recently been revealed that his wartime duties entailed providing secret intelligence reports.

Betjeman never took himself too seriously. His poems are often humorous, and in later life he enjoyed a career as a broadcaster, his popularity being in no small measure due to his bumbling image. He became Poet Laureate in 1972, succeeding Cecil Day Lewis. One of his first duties was to produce a poem in honour of the wedding of Princess Anne.

John Betjeman died at Trebetherick, Cornwall in his 78th year.

From A Few Late Chrysanthemums:

• Oh little body, do not die. The soul looks out through wide blue eyes so questioningly into mine, that my tormented soul replies: "Oh little body, do not die. You hold the soul that talks to me, although our conversation be as wordless as the windy sky.

The poems are by default sorted according to volume, but you can also choose to sort them alphabetically or by page views.

First Line	Comments
"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
A man on his own in a car	2 Comments
Across the wet November night
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
Bells are booming down the bohreens,	2 Comments
Bird-watching colonels on the old sea wall,
Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!	1 Comment
Cut down that timber! Bells, too many and strong,
Encase your legs in nylons,	2 Comments
From Bermondsey to Wandsworth
From the geyser ventilators	3 Comments
Gaily into Ruislip Gardens	2 Comments
Golden haired and golden hearted
Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate,
Here among long-discarded cassocks,	7 Comments
High dormers are rising
How straight it flew, how long it flew,	5 Comments
I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I made hay while the sun shone.	1 Comment
I walked into the night-club in the morning;	1 Comment
In the licorice fields at Pontefract
Isn't she lovely, "the Mistress"?
Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy,	9 Comments
Let me take this other glove off	6 Comments
Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,	4 Comments
Oh would I could subdue the flesh
Phone for the fish knives, Norman	8 Comments
She died in the upstairs bedroom	5 Comments
The bells of waiting Advent ring,	2 Comments
The clock is frozen in the tower,
The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
The flag that hung half-mast today
The gas was on in the Institute,
The heavy mahogany door with its wrought-iron screen
The kind old face, the egg-shaped head,	2 Comments
The last year's leaves are on the beech:	1 Comment
The sea runs back against itself
The sleepy sound of a tea-time tide	1 Comment
The sort of girl I like to see
The three men coming down the winter hill
This is the time of day when we in the Mens's ward
Those moments, tasted once and never done,	1 Comment
Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
Was it worth keeping the Halt open,
We used to picnic where the thrift
When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley	1 Comment
With one consuming roar along the shingle