Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry

With one consuming roar along the shingle

The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down

To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,

A mounting arch of water weedy-brown

Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.

Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.

In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller

Than those of summer, all their cold unload

Full on the gimcrack attic of the villa

Where I am lodging off the Orwell Road,

I put my final shilling in the meter

And only make my loneliness completer.

In eighteen ninety-four when we were founded,

Counting our Reverend Mother we were six,

How full of hope we were and prayer-surrounded

“The Little Sisters of the Hanging Pyx”.

We built our orphanage. We built our school.

Now only I am left to keep the rule.

Here in the gardens of the Spa Pavillion

Warm in the whisper of the summer sea,

The cushioned scabious, a deep vermillion,

With white pins stuck in it, looks up at me

A sun-lit kingdom touched by butterflies

And so my memory of the winter dies.

Across the grass the poplar shades grow longer

And louder clang the waves along the coast.

The band packs up. The evening breeze is stronger

And all the world goes home to tea and toast.

I hurry past a cakeshop’s tempting scones

Bound for the red brick twilight of St.John’s.

“Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising”

Here where the white light burns with steady glow

Safe from the vain world’s silly sympathising,

Safe with the love I was born to know,

Safe from the surging of the lonely sea

My heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in Thee.

 

***

 

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