IN A BATH TEASHOP

John Betjeman 1906-84

"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another - 

Let us hold hands and look."

She such a very ordinary little woman;

He such a thumping crook;

But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels

In the teashop's ingle-nook.

-o0o-

THE LAST LAUGH

John Betjeman 1906-84

I made hay while the sun shone.

My work sold.

Now, if the harvest is over

And the world cold,

Give me the bonus of laughter

As I lose hold.

-o0o-

DARK LOCHNAGAR
George Gordon, Lord Byron 1788-1824

Away, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses,
In you let the minions of luxury rove,
Restore me the rocks where the snow-flake reposes,
Though still they are sacred to freedom and love.
Yet Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,
Round their white summits though elements war,
Though cataracts foam ‘stead of smooth-flowing fountains,
I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar.

Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wander’d,
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid.
On chieftains long perish’d my memory ponder’d
As daily I strode through the pine-cover’d glade.
I sought not my home till the day’s dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star,
For fancy was cheer’d by traditional story
Disclos’d by the natives of dark Lochnagar!

Shades of the dead! Have I not heard your voices
Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?
Surely the soul of the hero rejoices,
And rides on the wind o’er his own Highland vale.
Round Lochnagar while the stormy mist gathers,
Winter presides in his cold icy car.
Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers;
They dwell in the tempests of dark Lochnagar.

-o0o-

THE THOMAS HARDY POEM

A Wife in London
December 1899

I
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold-on-fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He - he has fallen - in the far South Land . . .

II
'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:

Fresh - firm - penned in highest feather -
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-