Oh when the early morning at the seaside <br /> Took us with hurrying steps from Horsey Mere <br />To see the whistling bent-grass on the leeside <br /> And then the tumbled breaker-line appear, <br />On high, the clouds with mighty adumbration <br /> Sailed over us to seaward fast and clear <br />And jellyfish in quivering isolation <br /> Lay silted in the dry sand of the breeze <br />And we, along the table-land of beach blown <br /> Went gooseflesh from our shoulders to our knees <br />And ran to catch the football, each to each thrown, <br /> In the soft and swirling music of the seas. <br />There splashed about our ankles as we waded <br /> Those intersecting wavelets morning-cold, <br />And sudden dark a patch of sky was shaded, <br /> And sudden light, another patch would hold <br />The warmth of whirling atoms in a sun-shot <br /> And underwater sandstorm green and gold. <br />So in we dived and louder than a gunshot <br /> Sea-water broke in fountains down the ear. <br />How cold the bathe, how chattering cold the drying, <br /> How welcoming the inland reeds appear, <br />The wood-smoke and the breakfast and the frying, <br /> And your warm freshwater ripples, Horsey Mere.<br /><br />John Betjeman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/east-anglian-bathe/
