Verses Turned… poem – John Betjeman poems

Across the wet November night

The church is bright with candlelight

And waiting Evensong.

A single bell with plaintive strokes

Pleads louder than the stirring oaks

The leafless lanes along.

It calls the hoirboys from their tea

And villagers, the two or three,

Damp down the kitchen fire,

Let out the cat, and up the lane

Go paddling through the gentle rain

Of misty Oxfordshire.

How warm the many candles shine

Of Samuel Dowbiggin’s design

For this interior neat,

These high box pews of Georgian days

Which screen us from the public gaze

When we make answer meet;

How gracefully their shadow falls

On bold pilasters down the walls

And on the pulpit high.

The chandeliers would twinkle gold

As pre-Tractarian sermons roll’d

Doctrinal, sound and dry.

From that west gallery no doubt

The viol and serpent tooted out

The Tallis tune to Ken,

And firmly at the end of prayers

The clerk below the pulpit stairs

Would thunder out “Amen.”

But every wand’ring thought will cease

Before the noble alterpiece

With carven swags array’d,

For there in letters all may read

The Lord’s Commandments, Prayer and Creed,

And decently display’d.

On country morningd sharp and clear

The penitent in faith draw near

And kneeling here below

Partake the heavenly banquet spread

Of sacremental Wine and Bread

And Jesus’ presence know.

And must that plaintive bell in vain

Plead loud along the dripping lane?

And must the building fall?

Not while we love the church and live

And of our charity will give

Our much, our more, our all.

 

***

 

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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• Devonshire Street W.1 poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• Death In Leamington poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
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• An Edwardian Sunday, Broomhill, Sheffield poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• A Subaltern’s Love Song poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
• A Shropshire Lad poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry
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