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 Felixtowe.
In
winter when the sea winds chill and shriller Than those
is 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 Revered Mother we were
six, How full of hope we were and prayer surrounded
"The Little Sisters of the Hanging Pyx". We built our
orphange. We ran our school. Now only I am left to keep
the rule.
Here in the gardens of the Spa Pavilion
Warm in the whisper of a 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 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
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
sitting and mine uprising" Here where the white light
burns with steady glow Safe from vain world's silly
sympathising, Safe with Love that I was born to know,
Safe from the surging of the lonely sea My heart finds
rest, my heart finds rest in Thee. |