Cornish Cliffs poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry

Those moments, tasted once and never done,

Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.

A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun-

The seagulls plane and circle out of sight

Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height,

The veined sea-campion buds burst into white

And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside

Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide

To where the slate falls sheer into the tide.

More than in gardened Surrey, nature spills

A wealth of heather, kidney-vetch and squills

Over these long-defended Cornish hills.

A gun-emplacement of the latest war

Looks older than the hill fort built before

Saxon or Norman headed for the shore.

And in the shadowless, unclouded glare

Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where

A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.

Nut-smell of gorse and honey-smell of ling

Waft out to sea the freshness of the spring

On sunny shallows, green and whispering.

The wideness which the lark-song gives the sky

Shrinks at the clang of sea-birds sailing by

Whose notes are tuned to days when seas are high.

From today’s calm, the lane’s enclosing green

Leads inland to a usual Cornish scene-

Slate cottages with sycamore between,

Small fields and tellymasts and wires and poles

With, as the everlasting ocean rolls,

Two chapels built for half a hundred souls.

 

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More poems by John Betjeman:

• Winter Seascape poem – John Betjeman poems
• Winter Landscape poem – John Betjeman poems
• Westgate-On-Sea poem – John Betjeman poems
• Verses Turned… poem – John Betjeman poems
• Upper Lambourne poem – John Betjeman poems
• Trebetherick poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Plantster’s Vision poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Olympic Girl poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Licorice Fields at Pontefract poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Last Laugh poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Irish Unionist’s farewell to Greta Hellastrom in 1922 poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Hon. Sec. poem – John Betjeman poems
• The Cottage Hospital poem – John Betjeman poems
• Sun and Fun poem – John Betjeman poems
• South London Sketch poem – John Betjeman poems
• Slough poem – John Betjeman poems
• Senex poem – John Betjeman poems
• Seaside Golf poem – John Betjeman poems
• On a Portrait of a Deaf Man poem – John Betjeman poems
• Myfanwy poem – John Betjeman poems
• Mortality poem – John Betjeman poems
• Middlesex poem – John Betjeman poems
• Meditation on the A30 poem – John Betjeman poems
• Loneliness poem – John Betjeman poems
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• In Westminster Abbey poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• How To Get On In Society poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Harrow-on-the-Hill poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Guilt poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Executive poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Dilton Marsh Halt poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Diary of a Church Mouse poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Devonshire Street W.1 poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Death In Leamington poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Dawlish poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Cornish Cliffs poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Christmas poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Business Girls poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Back From Australia poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
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