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 wideTo where the slate falls sheer into the tide.
More than in gardened Surrey, nature
spills
A wealth of heather, kidney-vetch and
squillsOver these long-defended Cornish hills.
A gun-emplacement of the latest war
Looks older than the hill fort built
beforeSaxon or Norman headed for the shore.
And in the shadowless, unclouded glare
Deep blue above us fades to whiteness
whereA 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
springOn sunny shallows, green and whispering.
The wideness which the lark-song gives
the sky
Shrinks at the clang of sea-birds
sailing byWhose 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.
Betjeman uses enjambment in 'Cornish Cliffs' to give flow to the poem, “And in the shadowless, unclouded glare /Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where /A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.”; this could be interpreted as the flow of the sea which clashes up against the cliffs, or it could simply be the cliffs flowing around the coastline of the United Kingdom. Sibilance can also be spotted throughout this poem, “Slate cottages with sycamore between,” perhaps this is to emphasise the Cornish message of the poem as ‘s’ is in Cornish. It may also be to give the onomatopoeic ‘shush’ of the sea and wind, which are a prominent sound one would hear when on the Cornish cliffs.
ReplyDeleteIn the last stanza Betjeman describes the ocean as 'everlasting' as if to juxtapose the impermanent nature of human interference with the eternal natural world which is explored throughout the poem. Earlier on in the poem Betjeman writes about the 10th and 11th century invasion by the Saxons and Normans of the Cornish Cliffs, which have long since stood, and later goes on to talk about modern day, man-made conveniences, 'tellymasts and wires and poles', putting emphasis on the evolution of mankind in comparison to the unchanged disposition of nature.
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