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Best Famous Surrey Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Surrey poems. This is a select list of the best famous Surrey poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Surrey poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of surrey poems.

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Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Marginalia

 Here is a silence I had not hoped for

This side of paradise, I am an old believer

In nature’s bounty as God’s grace

To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming

At frustrated lust or the scent of fame 

Coming too late to make a difference

Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the hue of hawthorn 

With the heather beginning to bud blue

Before September purple, yellow ragwort

Sways in the wind as distantly a plane hums

And a lazy bee bumbles by.

A day in Brenda’s flat, mostly play with Eydie,

My favourite of her seven cats, they soothe better

Than Diazepan for panic

Seroxat for grief

Zopiclone to make me sleep.

I smoke my pipe and sip blackcurrant tea

Aware of the ticking clock: I have to be back

To talk to my son’s key nurse when she comes on

For the night shift. Always there are things to sort,

Misapprehensions to untangle, delusions to decipher,

Lies to expose, statistics to disclose, Trust Boards

And team meetings to attend, ‘Mental Health Monthly’

To peruse, funds for my press to raise – the only one 

I ever got will leave me out of pocket.

A couple sat on the next bench

Are earnestly discussing child custody, broken marriages,

Failed affairs, social service interventions – 

Even here I cannot escape complexity

"I should never have slept with her once we split" 

"The kids are what matters when it comes to the bottom line"

"Is he poisoning their minds against me?" 


Part of me nags to offer help but I’ve too much

On already and the clock keeps ticking.

"It’s a pity she won’t turn round and clip his ear"

But better not to interfere. Damn my bloody superego

Nattering like an old woman or Daisy nagging 

About my pipe and my loud voice on buses –

No doubt she’s right – smoking’s not good 

And hearing about psychosis, medication and end-on-sections

Isn’t what people are on buses for.



I long for a girl in summer, pubescent

With a twinkle in her eye to come and say

"Come on, let’s do it!" 

I was always shy in adolescence, too busy reading Baudelaire

To find a decent whore and learn to score

And now I’m probably impotent with depression

So I’d better forget sex and read more of Andr? Green

On metaphor from Hegel to Lacan and how the colloquium

At Bonneval changed analytic history, a mystery

I’ll not unravel if I live to ninety.

Ignorance isn’t bliss, I know enough to talk the piss

From jumped-up SHO’s and locums who’d miss vital side effects

And think all’s needed is a mother’s kiss.



I’ll wait till the heather’s purple and bring nail scissors

To cut and suture neatly and renew my stocks

Of moor momentoes vased in unsunny Surrey.

Can you believe it? Some arseholes letting off fireworks 

On the moor? Suburban excesses spread like the sores

Of syphilis and more regulations in a decade of Blair

Than in the century before.

"Shop your neighbours. Prove it. Bring birth certificates to A&E

If you want NHS treatment free. Be careful not to bleed to death

While finding the certificate. Blunkett wants us all to have ID

Photo cards, genetic codes, DNA database, eye scans, the lot – 

And kiss good-bye to the last bits of freedom we’ve got"

"At the end of the day she shopped me and all I’d done

Was take a few pound from the till ’cos Jenny was ill

And I didn’t have thirteen quid to get the bloody prescription done" 

To-morrow I’ll be back in the Great Wen,

Two days of manic catching up and then

Thistledown, wild wheat, a dozen kinds of grass,

The mass of beckoning hills I’d love to make

A poet’s map of but never will.

"Oh to break loose" Lowell’s magic lines

Entice me still but slimy Fenton had to have his will

And slate it in the NYB, arguing that panetone

Isn’t tin foil as Lowell thought. James you are a dreadful bore,

A pedantic creep like hundreds more, five A4 pages

Of sniping and nit-picking for how many greenbacks?

A thousand or two I’d guess, they couldn’t pay you less

For churning out such a king-size mess

But not even you can spoil this afternoon

Of watching Haworth heather bloom.


Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Accordion

 Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;
Of viol or of lute some make a song.
My battered old accordion, you're worthy of a rhyme,
You've been my friend and comforter so long.
Round half the world I've trotted you, a dozen years or more;
You've given heaps of people lots of fun;
You've set a host of happy feet a-tapping on the floor . . .
Alas! your dancing days are nearly done.

I've played you from the palm-belt to the suburbs of the Pole;
From the silver-tipped sierras to the sea.
The gay and gilded cabin and the grimy glory-hole
Have echoed to your impish melody.
I've hushed you in the dug-out when the trench was stiff with dead;
I've lulled you by the coral-laced lagoon;
I've packed you on a camel from the dung-fire on the bled,
To the hell-for-breakfast Mountains of the Moon.

I've ground you to the shanty men, a-whooping heel and toe,
And the hula-hula graces in the glade.
I've swung you in the igloo to the lousy Esquimau,
And the Haussa at a hundred in the shade.
The ****** on the levee, and the Dinka by the Nile
have shuffled to your insolent appeal.
I've rocked with glee the chimpanzee, and mocked the crocodile,
And shocked the pompous penquin and the seal.

I've set the yokels singing in a little Surrey pub,
Apaches swinging in a Belville bar.
I've played an obligato to the tom-tom's rub-a-dub,
And the throb of Andalusian guitar.
From the Horn to Honolulu, from the Cape to Kalamazoo,
From Wick to Wicklow, Samarkand to Spain,
You've roughed it with my kilt-bag like a comrade tried and true. . . .
Old pal! We'll never hit the trail again.

Oh I know you're cheap and vulgar, you're an instrumental crime.
In drawing-rooms you haven't got a show.
You're a musical abortion, you're the voice of grit and grime,
You're the spokesman of the lowly and the low.
You're a democratic devil, you're the darling of the mob;
You're a wheezy, breezy blasted bit of glee.
You're the headache of the high-bow, you're the horror of the snob,
but you're worth your weight in ruddy gold to me.

For you've chided me in weakness and you've cheered me in defeat;
You've been an anodyne in hours of pain;
And when the slugging jolts of life have jarred me off my feet,
You've ragged me back into the ring again.
I'll never go to Heaven, for I know I am not fit,
The golden harps of harmony to swell;
But with asbestos bellows, if the devil will permit,
I'll swing you to the fork-tailed imps of Hell.

Yes, I'll hank you, and I'll spank you,
And I'll everlasting yank you
To the cinder-swinging satellites of Hell.
Written by John Betjeman | Create an image from this poem

Guilt

 The clock is frozen in the tower,
The thickening fog with sooty smell
Has blanketed the motor power
Which turns the London streets to hell;
And footsteps with their lonely sound
Intensify the silence round.

I haven't hope. I haven't faith.
I live two lives and sometimes three.
The lives I live make life a death
For those who have to live with me.
Knowing the virtues that I lack,
I pat myself upon the back.

With breastplate of self-righteousness
And shoes of smugness on my feet,
Before the urge in me grows less
I hurry off to make retreat.
For somewhere, somewhere, burns a light
To lead me out into the night.

It glitters icy, thin and plain,
And leads me down to Waterloo-
Into a warm electric train
Which travels sorry Surrey through
And crystal-hung, the clumps of pine
Stand deadly still beside the line.
Written by John Betjeman | Create an image from this poem

Cornish Cliffs

 Those moments, tasted once and never done,
Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.
A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun-

The seagulls plane and circle out of sight
Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height,
The veined sea-campion buds burst into white

And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside
Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide
To where the slate falls sheer into the tide.

More than in gardened Surrey, nature spills
A wealth of heather, kidney-vetch and squills
Over these long-defended Cornish hills.

A gun-emplacement of the latest war
Looks older than the hill fort built before
Saxon or Norman headed for the shore.

And in the shadowless, unclouded glare
Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where
A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.

Nut-smell of gorse and honey-smell of ling
Waft out to sea the freshness of the spring
On sunny shallows, green and whispering.

The wideness which the lark-song gives the sky
Shrinks at the clang of sea-birds sailing by
Whose notes are tuned to days when seas are high.

From today's calm, the lane's enclosing green
Leads inland to a usual Cornish scene-
Slate cottages with sycamore between,

Small fields and tellymasts and wires and poles
With, as the everlasting ocean rolls,
Two chapels built for half a hundred souls.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Merrow Down

 There runs a road by Merrow Down--
 A grassy track to-day it is--
An hour out Guildford town,
 Above the river Wey it is.

Here, when they heard the hors-bells ring,
 The ancient Britons dressed and rode
To which the dark Phoenicians bring
 Their goods along the Western Road.

Yes, here, or hereabouts, they met
 To hold their racial talks and such--
To barter beads for Whitby jet,
 And tin for gay shell torques and such.


But long ago before that time 
 (When bison used to roam on it)
Did Taffy and her Daddy climb
 That Down, and had their home on it.

Then beavers built in Broadstonebrook
 And made a swamp where Bramley stands;
And bears from Shere would come and look
 For Taffimai where Shamley stands.

The Wey, that Taffy called Wagai,
 Was more than six times bigger then;
And all the Tribe of Tegumai
 They cut a noble figure then!


 II

Of all the Tribe of Tegumai
 Who cut that figure, none remain,--
On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry--
 The silence and the sun remain.

But as the faithful years return
 And hearts unwounded sing again,
Comes Taffy dancing through the fern
 To lead the Surrey spring again.

 Her brows are bound with bracken-fronds,
 And golden elf-locks fly above;
 Her eyes are bright as diamonds
 And bluer than the sky above.

 In moccasins and deer-skin cloak,
 Unfearing, free and fair she flits,
 And lights her little damp-wood smoke
 To show her Daddy where she flits.

 For far--oh, very far behind,
 So far she cannot call to him,
 Comes Tegumai alone to find
 The daughter that was all to him!


Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Sussex

 God gave all men all earth to love,
 But, since our hearts are small
Ordained for each one spot should prove
 Beloved over all;
That, as He watched Creation's birth,
 So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
 And see that it is good.

So one shall Baltic pines content,
 As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove's droned lament
 Before Levuka's Trade.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
 The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground --
 Yea, Sussex by the sea!

No tender-hearted garden crowns,
 No bosonied woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
 But gnarled and writhen thorn --
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
 And, through the gaps revealed,
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim,
 Blue goodness of the Weald.

Clean of officious fence or hedge,
 Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff-edge
 As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
 At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
 The sunlight and the sward.

Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west
 All heavy-winged with brine,
Here lies above the folded crest
 The Channel's leaden line,
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
 And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
 Along the hidden beach.

We have no waters to delight
 Our broad and brookless vales --
Only the dewpond on the height
 Unfed, that never fails --
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
 Which way the season flies --
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
 Like dawn in Paradise.

Here through the strong and shadeless days
 The tinkling silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
 The Lord who made the hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
 And, in her secret heart,
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
 Dreams, as she dwells, apart.

Though all the rest were all my share,
 With equal soul I'd see
Her nine-and-thirty sisters fair,
 Yet none more fair than she.
Choose ye your need from Thames to Tweed,
 And I will choose instead
Such lands as lie 'twixt Rake and Rye,
 Black Down and Beachy Head.

I will go out against the sun
 Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
 Looks naked toward the shires;
And east till doubling Rother crawls
 To find the fickle tide,
By dry and sea-forgotten walls,
 Our ports of stranded pride.

I will go north about the shaws
 And the deep ghylls that breed
Huge oaks and old, the which we hold
 No more than Sussex weed;
Or south where windy Piddinghoe's
 Begilded dolphin veers,
And red beside wide-banked Ouse
 Lie down our Sussex steers.

So to the land our hearts we give
 Til the sure magic strike,
And Memory, Use, and Love make live
 Us and our fields alike --
That deeper than our speech and thought,
 Beyond our reason's sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
 Yearns to its fellow-clay.

God gives all men all earth to love,
 But, since man's heart is smal,
Ordains for each one spot shal prove
 Beloved over all.
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
 The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground-in a fair ground --
 Yea, Sussex by the sea!
Written by Mother Goose | Create an image from this poem

The Old Woman Of Surrey

  There was an old woman in Surrey,Who was morn, noon, and night in a hurry;    Called her husband a fool,    Drove the children to school,The worrying old woman of Surrey.
Written by Francesco Petrarch | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet CIX

SONNET CIX.

Amor che nel pensier mio vive e regna.

THE COURAGE AND TIMIDITY OF LOVE.

The long Love that in my thought I harbour,And in my heart doth keep his residence,Into my face pressèth with bold pretence,And there campèth displaying his bannèr.She that me learns to love and to suffèr,And wills that my trust, and lust's negligenceBe rein'd by reason, shame, and reverence,With his hardiness takes displeasure.Wherewith Love to the heart's forest he fleeth,Leaving his enterprise with pain and cry,And there him hideth, and not appearèth.What may I do, when my master fearèth,But in the field with him to live and die?For good is the life, ending faithfully.
Wyatt.
Love, that liveth and reigneth in my thought,That built its seat within my captive breast;[Pg 139]Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.She, that me taught to love, and suffer pain;My doubtful hope, and eke my hot desireWith shamefaced cloak to shadow and restrain,Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.And coward love then to the heart apaceTaketh his flight; whereas he lurks, and plainsHis purpose lost, and dare not show his face.For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pains.Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:Sweet is his death, that takes his end by love.
Surrey.
Love in my thought who ever lives and reigns,And in my heart still holds the upper place,At times come forward boldly in my face,There plants his ensign and his post maintains:She, who in love instructs us and its pains,Would fain that reason, shame, respect should chasePresumptuous hope and high desire abase,And at our daring scarce herself restrains,Love thereon to my heart retires dismay'd,Abandons his attempt, and weeps and fears,And hiding there, no more my friend appears.What can the liege whose lord is thus afraid,More than with him, till life's last gasp, to dwell?For who well loving dies at least dies well.
Macgregor.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things