An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry

High dormers are rising

So sharp and surprising,

And ponticum edges

The driveways of gravel;

Stone houses from ledges

Look down on ravines.

The vision can travel

From gable to gable,

Italianate mansion

And turretted stable,

A sylvan expansion

So varied and jolly

Where laurel and holly

Commingle their greens.

Serene on a Sunday

The sun glitters hotly

O’er mills that on Monday

With engines will hum.

By tramway excursion

To Dore and to Totley

In search of diversion

The millworkers come;

But in our arboreta

The sounds are discreeter

Of shoes upon stone –

The worshippers wending

To welcoming chapel,

Companioned or lone;

And over a pew there

See loveliness lean,

As Eve shows her apple

Through rich bombazine;

What love is born new there

In blushing eighteen!

Your prospects will please her,

The iron-king’s daughter,

Up here on Broomhill;

Strange Hallamshire, County

Of dearth and of bounty,

Of brown tumbling water

And furnace and mill.

Your own Ebenezer

Looks down from his height

On back street and alley

And chemical valley

Laid out in the light;

On ugly and pretty

Where industry thrives

In this hill-shadowed city

Of razors and knives.

 

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