With one consuming roar along the shingle <br />The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down <br />To where its backwash and the next wave mingle, <br />A mounting arch of water weedy-brown <br />Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow. <br />Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe. <br /> <br />In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller <br />Than those of summer, all their cold unload <br />Full on the gimcrack attic of the villa <br />Where I am lodging off the Orwell Road, <br />I put my final shilling in the meter <br />And only make my loneliness completer. <br /> <br />In eighteen ninety-four when we were founded, <br />Counting our Reverend Mother we were six, <br />How full of hope we were and prayer-surrounded <br />'The Little Sisters of the Hanging Pyx'. <br />We built our orphanage. We built our school. <br />Now only I am left to keep the rule. <br /> <br />Here in the gardens of the Spa Pavillion <br />Warm in the whisper of the summer sea, <br />The cushioned scabious, a deep vermillion, <br />With white pins stuck in it, looks up at me <br />A sun-lit kingdom touched by butterflies <br />And so my memory of the winter dies. <br /> <br />Across the grass the poplar shades grow longer <br />And louder clang the waves along the coast. <br />The band packs up. The evening breeze is stronger <br />And all the world goes home to tea and toast. <br />I hurry past a cakeshop's tempting scones <br />Bound for the red brick twilight of St.John's. <br /> <br />'Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising' <br />Here where the white light burns with steady glow <br />Safe from the vain world's silly sympathising, <br />Safe with the love I was born to know, <br />Safe from the surging of the lonely sea <br />My heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in Thee.<br /><br />John Betjeman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/felixstowe-or-the-last-of-her-order/
