John Betjeman’s “Christmas”
John Betjeman is one of the most unjustly overlooked poets of recent times. An Englishman, he loved the countryside – its slower and more contemplative pace of life – and was skeptical of modernity. Here is his poem “Christmas” :
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
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Here’s the Norton Anthology on him (p. 715 of the 2nd edition):
Auden wrote an admiring preface to the American edition of Betjeman’s poems in which he praised them as “slick but not streamlined.” The two poets invite comparisons: Auden always faced the future . . . while Betjeman looked over his shoulder at what is gone or going. Hope plays for the one the part that nostalgia plays for the other. Bells–symbols of the old order–appear obsessively in Betjeman’s verse. Auden was always eager to move about, and to find new themes far away from home . . . Betjeman in his poetry stayed close, matching contemporary England with old, to the former’s disadvantage.
He was the witty spokesman for old England, for the conservatism which clings to a past not only in art, architecture and literature, but also in institutions. He made a virtue out of anachronism. Perhaps, then, it was only fitting when in 1972 he was named to the anachronistic post of Poet Laureate of Great Britain.
A lovely poem. It is so sad that the England he celebrated in it is almost dead.