Pictures of England

Search:

Historic Towns & Picturesque Villages

Welsh Hills.

Llanberis

in the county of Gwynedd

Cornish Cliffs

By Sir John Betjeman © (1906 - 1984)



Image of Cornwall by Hilary Hoad ©


Cornish Cliffs

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.

By Sir John Betjeman © (1906 - 1984)

Please add a comment and rate this poem..

Please login to make a comment and rate this England poem

More poems about England..

PoemAuthor
The Secret PeopleG K Chesterton
Alcuin's Poem of YorkAlcuin (735 - 804)
A Dream Or NoThomas Hardy © (1840 - 1928)
LudlowJohn Creber ©
JerusalemWilliam Blake
Home Thoughts, From AbroadRobert Browning (1812 - 1889)
The SoldierRupert Brooke (1887 - 1915)
England, My EnglandWilliam Ernest Henley (1849 - 1903)
Happy Is EnglandJohn Keats (1795 - 1821)
Young EnglandWilliam Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
Song to the men of EnglandPercy Bysshe Shelley
I Wandered Lonely As A CloudWilliam Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
ETERNAL ENGLANDThurstan Bassett ©
Memories of Winter on a Dorset MoorHarry E Wheeler ©
The English Country LaneChris Plows ©