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Felixstowe Nub News delves into the poet Sir John Betjeman and his connection to Felixstowe.

Sir John Betjeman was an English poet, writer and broadcaster. He is most likely best known as holding the position of Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984.

Betjeman was also known for his journalistic work, including his work on buildings, landscape and heritage. This interest of his led him all across the nation, including Felixstowe.

Betjeman briefly lodged in Felixstowe and, during this time, wrote an ode of sorts called Felixstowe or "The last of her order."

The poem goes as followed:

With one consuming roar along the shingle

The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down

To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,

A mounting arch of water weedy-brown

Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.

Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.

In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller

Than those of summer, all their cold unload

Full on the gimcrack attic of the villa

Where I am lodging off the Orwell Road,

I put my final shilling in the meter

And only make my loneliness completer.

In eighteen ninety-four when we were founded,

Counting our Reverend Mother we were six,

How full of hope we were and prayer-surrounded

"The Little Sisters of the Hanging Pyx".

We built our orphanage. We built our school.

Now only I am left to keep the rule.

Here in the gardens of the Spa Pavillion

Warm in the whisper of the summer sea,

The cushioned scabious, a deep vermillion,

With white pins stuck in it, looks up at me

A sun-lit kingdom touched by butterflies

And so my memory of the winter dies.

Across the grass the poplar shades grow longer

And louder clang the waves along the coast.

The band packs up. The evening breeze is stronger

And all the world goes home to tea and toast.

I hurry past a cakeshop's tempting scones

Bound for the red brick twilight of St.John's.

"Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising"

Here where the white light burns with steady glow

Safe from the vain world's silly sympathising,

Safe with the love I was born to know,

Safe from the surging of the lonely sea

My heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in Thee.

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