"To the gull’s way ... where the wind’s like a whetted knife

Yes. I remember Adlestrop—

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

  'JOHN BETJEMAN occupies a unique position in the British psyche, a comforting dreamland of fire-lit nurseries, teddies and tea, suburban gardens, country stations, seaside holidays and golf. He presented himself as the common man of middle England, middle-aged, middle class, yet not so much vox populi as vox humana. Philip Larkin praised him for restoring "direct intelligible communication to poetry". Through the many films he made for television Betjeman reached the hearts and minds of millions more who might never read a poem but who felt that they knew him and shared in his delights. His modest aim was to make people use their eyes, show them "things which are beautiful so that they will very soon realise what is ugly". To Mary Wilson he confided "your tastes are like mine in the Arts - and I think, though few will admit it, like most people's". "You understand things like Croydon as no one else would," wrote his secretary. Through his enthusiasms he conferred a special validity upon decent, unambitious provincial lives. "Eastbourne forever" he wrote to Cyril Connolly.' 

For pairs of lips to kiss maybe
Involves no trigonometry.
'Tis not so when four circles kiss
Each one the other three.
To bring this off the four must be
As three in one or one in three.
If one in three, beyond a doubt
Each gets three kisses from without.
If three in one, then is that one
Thrice kissed internally.
 

Four circles to the kissing come.
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the center.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There's now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend's a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of the squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.
 

To spy out spherical affairs
An oscular surveyor
Might find the task laborious,
The sphere is much the gayer,
And now besides the pair of pairs
A fifth sphere in the kissing shares.
Yet, signs and zero as before,
For each to kiss the other four
The square of the sum of all five bends
Is thrice the sum of their squares.
 

Frederick Soddy

Published in Nature Magazine June 20, 1936