Greenaway

We had sea pink in In The Spring a couple of weeks ago, and now here they are starting off this lovely poem about the cliffs and waves on Greenaway, but "withered brown" now.  This is Betjeman's Cornwall, a county which had for him the same importance of Sussex for Kipling - not their home county, but one for which they felt deep, almost overwhelming love.  And overwhelming is the word for this poem, as the poet dreams of being caught in the great Atlantic swell, with a final stanza which owes much - however bizarrely - to Blake.  This is John Betjeman's Greenaway.

I know so well this turfy mile,
These clumps of sea-pink withered brown,
The breezy cliff, the awkward stile,
The sandy path that takes me down.

To crackling layers of broken slate
Where black and flat sea-woodlice crawl
And isolated rock pools wait
Wash from the highest tides of all.

I know the roughly blasted track
That skirts a small and smelly bay
And over squelching bladderwrack
Leads to the beach at Greenaway.

Down on the shingle safe at last
I hear the slowly dragging roar
As mighty rollers mount to cast
Small coal and seaweed on the shore,

And spurting far as it can reach
The shooting surf comes hissing round
To heave a line along the beach
Of cowries waiting to be found.

Tide after tide by night and day
The breakers battle with the land
And rounded smooth along the bay
The faithful rocks protecting stand.

But in a dream the other night
I saw this coastline from the sea
And felt the breakers plunging white
Their weight of waters over me.

There were the stile, the turf, the shore,
The safety line of shingle beach
With every stroke I struck the more
The backwash sucked me out of reach.

Back into what a water-world
Of waving weed and waiting claws?
Of writhing tentacles uncurled
To drag me to what dreadful jaws?

Comments

[glo]

I read recently 'Cakes and Ale' by W. Somerset Maugham where Kentish seamen and workers are lovingly depicted. This is a fine book which is mainly about writers and writers's life, work and fame... and I still don't know why he chose this title...
My comment is slightly off topic... but the poem is fine indeed and I like especially the rhythm and pace of the verses which might remind the surge of wawes on the shore.