I have been looking for a Halloween poem from Betjeman.

This is the closest I can get.

LORD COZENS HARDY

Oh Lord Cozens Hardy
Your mausoleum is cold,
The dry brown grass is brittle
And frozen hard the mould
And where those Grecian columns rise
So white among the dark
Of yew trees and of hollies in
That corner of the park
By Norfolk oaks surrounded
Whose branches seem to talk,
I know, Lord Cozens Hardy,
I would not like to walk.

And even in the summer,
On a bright East-Anglian day
When round your Doric portico
Your children's children play
There's a something in the stillness
And our waiting eyes are drawn
From the butler and the footman
Bringing tea out on the lawn,
From the little silver spirit lamp
That burns so blue and still,
To the half-seen mausoleum
In the oak trees on the hill.

But when, Lord Cozens Hardy,
November stars are bright,
And the King's Head Inn at Letheringsett
Is shutting for the night,
The villagers have told me
That they do not like to pass
Near your curious mausoleum
Moon-shadowed on the grass
For fear of seeing walking
In the season of All Souls
That first Lord Cozens Hardy,
The Master of the Rolls.

John Betjeman

John Betjeman is in the park with a lady friend.

"Among the loud Americans, Zwei Englender were we."

IN THE PUBLIC GARDENS

In the Public Gardens,
To the airs of Strauss,
Eingang we're in love again
When ausgang we were aus.

The waltz was played, the songs were sung,
The night resolved our fears;
From bunchy boughs the lime trees hung
Their gold electroliers.

Among the loud Americans
Zwei Englender were we,
You so white and frail and pale
And me so deeply me;

I bought for you a dark-red rose,
I saw your grey-green eyes,
As high above the floodlights,
The true moon sailed the skies.

In the Public Gardens,
Ended things begin;
Ausgang we were out of love
Und eingang we are in.

John Betjeman

JB warns against emigrating to Spain.

THE COSTA BLANCA
(Two sonnets)

SHE

The Costa Blanca! Skies without a stain!
Eric and I at almond-blossom time
Came here and fell in love with it. The climb
Under the pine trees, up the dusty lane
To Casa Kenilworth, brought back again
Our honeymoon, when I was in my prime.
Good-bye democracy and smoke and grime{:}
Eric retires next year. We're off to Spain!
We've got the perfect site beside the shore,
Owned by a charming Spaniard, Miguel,
Who says that he is quite prepared to sell
And build our Casa for us and, what's more,
Preposterously cheaply. We have found
Delightful English people living round.

HE (Five years later)

Mind if I see your Mail? We used to share
Our Telegraph with people who've returned -
The lucky sods! I'll tell you what I've learned:
If you come out here put aside the fare
To England. I'd run like a bloody hare
If I'd a chance, and how we both have yearned
To see our Esher lawn. I think we've earned
A bit of what we had once over there.
That Dago caught the wife and me all right!
Here on this tideless, tourist-littered sea
We're stuck. You'd hate it too if you were me:
There's no piped water on the bloody site.
Our savings gone, we climb the stony path
Back to the house with scorpions in the bath.

John Betjeman

Today I offer you Betjeman's shortest poem - only six lines.

But it is a perfect little cameo of an unlikely relationship.

John Betjeman

IN A BATH TEASHOP

"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.

Note: The "very ordinary little woman" is believed to have been Alice Jennings, a married lady whom Betjeman met at the BBC.

While staying at nearby Birchington in the 1930s, John Betjeman wrote this poem about Westgate-on-Sea, which charmingly evokes the orderly, genteel holiday resort of the day.

WESTGATE-ON-SEA

Hark, I hear the bells of Westgate,
I will tell you what they sigh,
Where those minarets and steeples
Prick the open Thanet sky.

Happy bells of eighteen-ninety,
Bursting from your freestone tower!
Recalling laurel, shrubs and privet,
Red geraniums in flower.

Feet that scamper on the asphalt
Through the Borough Council grass,
Till they hide inside the shelter
Bright with ironwork and glass,

Striving chains of ordered children
Purple by the sea-breeze made,
Striving on to prunes and suet
Past the shops on the Parade.

Some with wire around their glasses,
Some with wire across their teeth,
Writhing frames for running noses
And the drooping lip beneath.

Church of England bells of Westgate!
On this balcony I stand,
White the woodwork wriggles round me,
Clock towers rise on either hand.

For me in my timber arbour
You have one more message yet,
"Plimsolls, plimsolls in the summer,
Oh goloshes in the wet!"

John Betjeman

Westgate-on-Sea is a seaside town in northeast Kent, England, with a population of 6,600.

Its two sandy beaches have remained a popular tourist attraction since the town's development in the 1860s from a small farming community.

CROYDON

In a house like that
Your Uncle Dick was born;
Satchel on back he walked to Whitgift
Every weekday morn.

Boys together in Coulsdon woodlands,
Bramble-berried and steep,
He and his pals would look for spadgers
Hidden deep.

The laurels are speckled in Marchmont Avenue
Just as they were before,
But the steps are dusty that still lead up to
Your Uncle Dick's front door.

Pear and apple in Croydon gardens
Bud and blossom and fall,
But your Uncle Dick has left his Croydon
Once for all.

John Betjeman

Notes:

'Spadger' is an old name for a sparrow - except in Australia, where it means something entirely different. Do your own research!

Betjeman is in "The Valley Of The Racehorse", an area of the Berkshire Downs, near Newbury - renowned for National Hunt racing, with more than 2,000 horses in training and over 50 racing yards.

He also seems obsessed by all things leathery!

UPPER LAMBOURNE

Up the ash-tree climbs the ivy,
Up the ivy climbs the sun,
With a twenty-thousand pattering
Has a valley breeze begun,
Feathery ash, neglected elder,
Shift the shade and make it run -

Shift the shade toward the nettles,
And the nettles set it free
To streak the stained Carrara headstone
Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,
He who trained a hundred winners
Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,
Leathery skin from sun and wind,
Leathery breeches, spreading stables,
Shining saddles left behind -
To the down the string of horses
Moving out of sight and mind.

Feathery ash in leathery Lambourne
Waves above the sarsen stone,
And Edwardian plantations
So coniferously moan
As to make the swelling downland,
Far-surrounding, seem their own.

John Betjeman

'Carrara' is a type of marble, originally from Italy, used for headstones and memorials.

I said here yesterday that I was concluding my collection of Betjeman's verse with poems about his pet subjects of growing old, illness and death.

But I have decided that would be too gloomy, so I have selected others - from the bottom of my bag.

They are not my favourites, but some may appeal to you.

Let me know.

"On their way back they found the girls at Easedale, sitting
beside the cottage where they sell ginger beer in August."
('Peer and Heiress', Walter Besant.)

LAKE DISTRICT

I pass the cruet and I see the lake
Running with light, beyond the garden pine,
That lake whose waters make me dream her mine.
Up to the top board mounting for my sake,
For me she breathes, for me each soft intake,
For me the plunge, the lake and limbs combine.
I pledge her in non-alcoholic wine
And give the H. P. Sauce another shake.

Spirit of Grasmere, bells of Ambleside,
Sing you and ring you, water bells, for me;
You water-colour waterfalls may froth.
Long hiking holidays will yet provide
Long stony lanes and back at six to tea
And Heinz's ketchup on the tablecloth.

John Betjeman

The quotation below the picture was included by Betjeman as a header to his poem.

I am afraid I am exhausting my collection of Betjeman poems.

A simple, poignant little vignette of a woman who has survived the minor deprivations of wartime England and has now grown graciously old.

OXFORD: SUDDEN ILLNESS AT THE BUS-STOP

At the time of evening when cars run sweetly,
Syringas blossom by Oxford gates.
In her evening velvet with a rose pinned neatly
By the distant bus-stop a don's wife waits.

From that wide bedroom with its two branched lighting
Over her looking-glass, up or down,
When sugar was short and the world was fighting
She first appeared in that velvet gown.

What forks since then have been slammed in places?
What peas turned out from how many a tin?
From plate-glass windows how many faces
Have watched professors come hobbling in?

Too much, too many! so fetch the doctor,
This dress has grown such a heavier load
Since Jack was only a Junior Proctor,
And rents were lower in Rawlinson Road.

John Betjeman

It is 1925 and JB is at his first year at Magdalen College, Oxford.

I sympathise about the sore feet!

A HIKE ON THE DOWNS

'Yes, rub some soap upon your feet!
We'll hike round Winchester for weeks-
Like ancient Britons - just we two -
Or more perhaps like ancient Greeks.

'You take your pipe - that will impress
Your strength on anyone that passes;
I'll take my Plautus (non purgatus)
And both my pairs of horn-rimmed glasses.

'I've got my first, and now I know
What life is and what life contains -
For, being just a first year man
You don't meet all the first-class brains.

'Objectively, our Common Room
Is like a small Athenian State -
Except for Lewis: he's all right
But do you think he's quite first rate?

'Hampshire mentality is low,
And that is why they stare at us.
Yes, here's the earthwork - but it's dark;
We may as well return by bus.'

John Betjeman

Religion for Betjeman was inextricably tied up with fear—possibly the legacy of a Calvinist nanny.

But surely religion should not be like this. It should be joyful.

John Calvin

CALVINISTIC EVENSONG

The six bells stopped, and in the dark I heard
Cold silence wait the Calvinistic word;
For Calvin now the soft oil lamps are lit
Hands on their hymnals six old women sit.
Black gowned and sinister, he now appears
Curate-in-charge of aged parish fears.
Let, unaccompanied, that psalm begin
Which deals most harshly with the fruits of sin!
Boy! pump the organ! let the anthem flow
With promise for the chosen saints below!
Pregnant with warning the globed elm trees wait
Fresh coffin-wood beside the churchyard gate.
And that mauve hat three cherries decorate
Next week shall topple from its trembling perch
While wet fields reek like some long empty church.

John Betjeman

This poem has been described as Betjeman's most moving elegy.

Dr. Ramsden was a don at Oxford University and, as indicated in the poem, an expert on silk worms.

Pembroke College, Oxford

I. M. WALTER RAMSDEN OB. MARCH 26, 1947 PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD

Dr. Ramsden cannot read The Times obituary to-day
He's dead.
Let monographs on silk worms by other people be
Thrown away
Unread
For he who best could understand and criticize them, he
Lies clay
In bed.

The body waits in Pembroke College where the ivy taps the panes
All night;
That old head so full of knowledge, that good heart that kept the
brains
All right,
Those old cheeks that faintly flushed as the port suffused the veins,
Drain'd white.

Crocus in the Fellows' Garden, winter jasmine up the wall
Gleam gold.
Shadows of Victorian chimneys on the sunny grassplot fall
Long, cold.
Master, Bursar, Senior Tutor, these, his three survivors, all
Feel old.

They remember, as the coffin to its final obsequations
Leaves the gates,
Buzz of bees in window boxes on their summer ministrations,
Kitchen din,
Cups and plates,
And the getting of bump suppers for the long-dead generations
Coming in,
From Eights.

John Betjeman

Note: "bumps"

We return to "The Diary Of A Nobody" with the Pooters going visiting in North London.

The Pooters are invited to Sunday Dinner (Lunch).

Muswell Hill

THOUGHTS ON "THE DIARY OF A NOBODY"

The Pooters walked to Watney Lodge
One Sunday morning hot and still
Where public footpaths used to dodge
Round elms and oaks to Muswell Hill.

That burning buttercuppy day
The local dogs were curled in sleep,
The writhing trunks of flowery May
Were polished by the sides of sheep.

And only footsteps in a lane
And birdsong broke the silence round
And chuffs of the Great Northern train
For Alexandra Palace bound.

The Watney Lodge I seem to see
Is gabled gothic hard and red,
With here a monkey puzzle tree
And there a round geranium bed.

Each mansion, each new-planted pine,
Each short and ostentatious drive
Meant Morning Prayer and beef and wine
And Queen Victoria alive.

Dear Charles and Carrie, I am sure,
Despite that awkward Sunday dinner,
Your lives were good and more secure
Than ours at cocktail time in Pinner.

John Betjeman

Note: After reading the poem, go to www.kendrive.blog.co.uk where I have posted some extracts from the "Diary" which describe in more detail the visit to Watney Lodge.

It is all pretty mundane stuff, but it portrays a picture of Victorian England.

We are back at Letchworth - the 'First Garden City' Utopia, where I spent an enjoyable childhood.

GROUP LIFE: LETCHWORTH

Tell me Pippididdledum,
Tell me how the children are.
Working each for weal of all
After what you said.
Barry's on the common far
Pedalling the Kiddie Kar.
Ann has had a laxative
And Alured is dead.
Sympathy is stencilling
Her decorative leatherwork,
Wilfred's learned a folk-tune for
The Morris Dancers' band.
I have my ex-Service man and
Mamie's done a lino-cut.
And Charlie's in the kinderbank
A-kicking up the sand.
Wittle-tittle, wittle-tittle
Toodle-oodle ducky birds,
What a lot my dicky chicky
Tiny tots have done.
Wouldn't it be jolly now,
To take our Aertex panters off
And have a jolly tumble in
The jolly, jolly sun?

John Betjeman

Note: 'weal' = "The welfare of the community; the general good." A very laudable attitude in Letchworth at that time.

Of course, the whole poem is ironical satire.

A sad tale of a man with a religious conscience and a fearful load of sins.

SUICIDE ON JUNCTION ROAD STATION
AFTER ABSTENTION FROM EVENING
COMMUNION IN NORTH LONDON

With the roar of the gas my heart gives a shout -
To Jehovah Tsidkenu the praise!
Bracket and bracket go blazon it out
In this Evangelical haze!

Jehovah Jireh! the arches ring,
The Mintons glisten, and grand
Are the surpliced boys as they sweetly sing
On the threshold of glory land.

Jehovah Nisi! from Tufnell Park,
Five minutes to Junction Road,
Through grey brick Gothic and London dark,
And my sins, a fearful load.

Six on the upside! six on the down side!
One gaslight in the Booking Hall
And a thousand sins on this lonely station -
What shall I do with them all?

John Betjeman (1937)

Note: Junction Road railway station (originally Junction Road for Tufnell Park) was opened by the Tottenham & Hampstead Junction Railway on 1 January 1872. It was located at the corner of Junction Road and Station Road in N19, at the northern tip of Islington, London.

Today Betjeman presents us with a sad tale of the innocent friendship of a sensitive little boy growing up in Victorian England.

Shades of Oscar!

NARCISSUS

Yes, it was Bedford Park the vision came from -
De Morgan lustre glowing round the hearth,
And that sweet flower which self-love takes its name from
Nodding among the lilies in the garth,
And Arnold Dolmetsch touching the spinet,
And Mother, Chiswick's earliest suffragette.

I was a delicate boy - my parents' only -
And highly strung. My father was in trade.
And how I loved, when Mother left me lonely,
To watch old Martha spice the marmalade,
Or help with flower arrangements in the lobby
Before I went to find my playmate Bobby.

We'ld go for walks, we bosom boyfriends would
(For Bobby's watching sisters drove us mad),
And when we just did nothing we were good,
But when we touched each other we were bad.
I found this out when Mother said one day
She thought we were unwholesome in our play.

So Bobby and I were parted. Bobby dear,
I didn't want my tea. I heard your sisters
Playing at hide-and-seek with you quite near
As off the garden gate I picked the blisters.
Oh tell me, Mother, what I mustn't do -
Then, Bobby, I can play again with you.

For I know hide-and-seek's most secret places
More than your sisters do. And you and I
Can scramble into them and leave no traces,
Nothing above us but the twigs and sky,
Nothing below us but the leaf-mould chilly
Where we can warm and hug each other silly.

My Mother wouldn't tell me why she hated
The things we did, and why they pained her so.
She said a fate far worse than death awaited
People who did the things we didn't know,
And then she said I was her precious child,
And once there was a man called Oscar Wilde.

"Open your story book and find a tale
Of ladyes fayre and deeds of derring-do,
Or good Sir Gawaine and the Holy Grail,
Mother will read her boy a page or two
Before she goes, this Women's Suffrage Week,
To hear that clever Mrs Pankhurst speak.

Sleep with your hands above your head. That's right -
And let no evil thoughts pollute the dark. "
She rose, and lowered the incandescent light.
I heard her footsteps die down Bedford Park.
Mother where are you? Bobby, Bobby, where?
I clung for safety to my teddy bear.

John Betjeman

NOTES:

Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940), was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England. He was a leading figure in the twentieth century revival of interest in early music.

Betjeman takes us on a red electric train through the northern suburbs of London.

Watch out for the 'Murray Poshes' and the 'Lupin Pooters'!

MIDDLESEX

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens
Runs the red electric train,
With a thousand Ta's and Pardon's
Daintily alights Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Drene;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden - father's hobby -
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandwich supper and the television screen.

Gentle Brent, I used to know you
Wandering Wembley-wards at will,
Now what change your waters show you
In the meadowlands you fill!
Recollect the elm-trees misty
And the footpaths climbing twisty
Under cedar-shaded palings,
Low laburnum-leaned-on railings,
Out of Northolt on and upward to the heights of Harrow hill.

Parish of enormous hayfields
Perivale stood all alone,
And from Greenford scent of mayfields
Most enticingly was blown
Over market gardens tidy,
Taverns for the bona fide,
Cockney anglers, cockney shooters,
Murray Poshes, Lupin Pooters
Long in Kensal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.

John Betjeman

'Murray Poshes' and 'Lupin Pooters'!

Lupin is jilted by his first fiancee, who marries Murray Posh, a rich man who makes three-shilling hats for the masses.

You can read the whole of the book online at:

http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/grossmith/diary00.htm

You can also listen to the introduction on librivox.org at:

http://ia301108.us.archive.org/2/items/diary_of_nobody_librivox/the_diary_of_a_nobody_00_grossmith_mac_64kb.mp3

Betjeman was passionate about the English countryside and a fierce campaigner against its desecration by urbanisation.

From the beginning it was a 'request' stop and incredibly trains still slow down in case anyone wants to flag them down.

DILTON MARSH HALT

Was it worth keeping the Halt open,
We thought as we looked at the sky
Red through the spread of the cedar-tree,
With the evening train gone by?

Yes, we said, for in summer the anglers use it,
Two and sometimes three
Will bring their catches of rods and poles and perches
To Westbury, home for tea.

There isn't a porter. The platform is made of sleepers.
The guard of the last train puts out the light
And high over lorries and cattle the Halt unwinking
Waits through the Wiltshire night.

O housewife safe in the comprehensive churning
Of the Warminster launderette!
O husband down at the depot with car in car-park!
The Halt is waiting yet.

And when all the horrible roads are finally done for,
And there's no more petrol left in the world to burn,
Here to the Halt from Salisbury and from Bristol
Steam trains will return.

John Betjeman

George Orwell spoke of: 'every fruit juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England' as living there and in this poem Betjeman jumps on the band-wagon.

HUXLEY HALL

In the Garden City Caf‚ with its murals on the wall
Before a talk on "Sex and Civics" I meditated on the Fall.

Deep depression settled on me under that electric glare
While outside the lightsome poplars flanked the rose-beds in the square.

While outside the carefree children sported in the summer haze
And released their inhibitions in a hundred different ways.

She who eats her greasy crumpets snugly in the inglenook
Of some birch-enshrouded homestead, dropping butter on her book

Can she know the deep depression of this bright, hygienic hell?
And her husband, stout free-thinker, can he share in it as well?

Not the folk-museum's charting of man's Progress out of slime
Can release me from the painful seeming accident of Time.

Barry smashes Shirley's dolly, Shirley's eyes are crossed with hate,
Comrades plot a Comrade's downfall "in the interests of the State".

Not my vegetarian dinner, not my lime-juice minus gin,
Quite can drown a faint conviction that we may be born in Sin.

John Betjeman

Please also refer to my blog today at: www.kendrive.blog.co.uk

Public houses in Irish country towns are very often general merchants as well.

It was in just such a general shop as I have described that I might have found, pinned up among the notices for a local Feis, Gaelic football matches and Government proclamations, the following ballad, printed on emerald paper in a border of shamrocks.

THE SMALL TOWNS OF IRELAND

The small towns of Ireland by bards are neglected,
They stand there, all lonesome, on hilltop and plain.
The Protestant glebe house by beech trees protected
Sits close to the gates of his Lordship's demesne.

But where is his Lordship, who once in a phaeton
Drove out twixt his lodges and into the town?
Oh his tragic misfortunes I will not dilate on;
His mansion's a ruin, his woods are cut down.

His impoverished descendant is dwelling in Ealing,
His daughters must type for their bread and their board,
O'er the graves of his forebears the nettle is stealing
And few will remember the sad Irish Lord.

Yet still stands the Mall where his agent resided,
The doctor, attorney and such class of men.
The elegant fanlights and windows provided
A Dublin-like look for the town's Upper Ten.

'Twas bravely they stood by the Protestant steeple
As over the town rose their roof-trees afar.
Let us slowly descend to the part where the people
Do mingle their ass-carts by Finnegan's bar.

I hear it once more, the soft sound of those voices,
When fair day is filling with farmers the Square,
And the heart in my bosom delights and rejoices
To think of the dealing and drinking done there.

I see thy grey granite, O grim House of Sessions!
I think of the judges who sat there in state
And my mind travels back to our monster processions
To honour the heroes of brave Ninety-Eight.

The barracks are burned where the Redcoats oppressed us,
The gaol is broke open, our people are free.
Though Cromwell once cursed us, Saint Patrick has blessed us -
The merciless English have fled o'er the sea.

Look out where yon cabins grow smaller to smallest,
Straw-thatched and one-storey and soon to come down,
To the prominent steeple, the newest and tallest,
Of Saint Malachy's Catholic Church in our town:

The fine architecture, the wealth of mosaic,
The various marbles on altars within -
To attempt a description were merely prosaic,
So, asking your pardon, I will not begin.

O my small town of Ireland, the raindrops caress you,
The sun sparkles bright on your field and your Square
As here on your bridge I salute you and bless you,
Your murmuring waters and turf-scented air.

John Betjeman

Note: The introduction to the poem was also written by Betjeman, who loved Ireland and lived in Dublin from 1941 to 1943 when he was press attaché to Sir John Maffey, Britain's High Commissioner.

For all you golfers, here is Betjeman reminiscing about a day at the links.

SEASIDE GOLF

How straight it flew, how long it flew,
It clear'd the rutty track
And soaring, disappeared from view
Beyond the bunker's back -
A glorious, sailing, bounding drive
That made me glad I was alive.

And down the fairway, far along
It glowed a lonely white;
I played an iron sure and strong
And clipp'd it out of sight,
And spite of grassy banks between
I knew I'd find it on the green.

And so I did. It lay content
Two paces from the pin;
A steady putt and then it went
Oh, most securely in.
The very turf rejoiced to see
That quite unprecedented three.

Ah! seaweed smel