John Betjeman > Quotes

“Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.”
― John Betjeman

“And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.”
― John Betjeman, Selected Poems

“Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!”
― John Betjeman

“Inexpensive Progress

Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor car is master
Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead.”
― John Betjeman, Collected Poems

“Soft and sun-warm, see her glide”
― John Betjeman, Selected Poems

“Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust.”
― John Betjeman, Collected Poems

“Imprisoned in a cage of sound Even the trivial seems profound”
― John Betjeman, Selected Poems

“It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio.”
― John Betjeman

“Oh better far those echoing hells
Half-threaten’d in the pealing bells
Than that this ‘I’ should cease to be—”
― John Betjeman, Collected Poems

“There in pinnacled protection, One extinguished family waits A Church of Ireland resurrection By the broken, rusty gates.”
― John Betjeman, John Betjeman Collected Poems

“Almighty Saviour, had I Faith
There’d be no fight with kindly Death.”
― John Betjeman, John Betjeman Collected Poems

“From the geyser ventilators
autumn winds are blowing down
on a thousand business women
having baths in Camden Town.

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,
steam's escaping here and there,
morning trains through Camden cutting
shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,
dahlias glimpsed through garden doves,
at the back precarious bathrooms
jutting out from upper floors;

and behind their frail partitions
business women lie and soak,
seeing through the draughty skylight
flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbeloved ones,
lap your loneliness in heat.
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
trolley-bus and windy street!”
― John Betjeman, Few Late Chrysanthemums

“Child of the First War, forgotten by the Second,
We called you Metro-land. We laid our schemes,
Lured by the lush brochure, down byways beckoned,”
― John Betjeman, Betjeman's England

“Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.”
― John Betjeman

“God in His mercy sent ye here to me.”
― John Betjeman, Collected Poems