Looking forward

I am so looking forward to going home that rampant nostalgia is driving me at the moment and that most English of poets, the much honored, the late John Betjeman comes to mind. The poem below with decorations by John Piper from The Saturday Book of 1956 will cool down the warmest of nostalgic days.

Thus, for your delectation, ladies and gentlemen:

Lord Barton-Bendish

Oh Lord Barton-Bendish!

Your mausoleum is cold;

The dry brown grass is brittle

And frozen hard the mould,

And where its Grecian columns rise

So white amongst the dark 

Of Yew trees and of hollies in

That corner of the park,

The Norfolk oaks around it

Have boughs that seem to talk;

And there, Lord Barton-Bendish,

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

Putting tea out on the lawn

From the little silver spirit lamp

Which burns so blue and still 

To the half-seen mausoleum

In the oak trees on the hill.

But when, Lord Barton-Bendish,

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

Your curious mausoleum

Moon-shadowed on the grass

For fear of seeing walking

In the season of All Souls

That first Lord Barton-Bendish,

The Master of the Rolls.