Matlock Bath

From Matlock Bath’s half-timbered station

    I see the black dissenting spire—

Thin witness of a congregation,

    Stone emblem of a Handel choir;

In blest Bethesda’s limpid pool

Comes treacling out of Sunday School.

By cool Siloam’s shady rill—

    The sounds are sweet as strawberry jam:

I raise mine eyes unto the hill,

    The beetling HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM;

The branchy trees are white with rime

In Matlock Bath this winter-time,

And from the whiteness, grey uprearing,

    Huge cliffs hang sunless ere they fall,

A tossed and stony ocean nearing

    The moment to o’erwhelm us all:

Eternal Father, strong to save,

How long wilt thou suspend the wave?

How long before the pleasant acres

    Of intersecting LOVERS’ WALKS

Are rolled across by limestone breakers,

    Whole woodlands snapp’d like cabbage stalks?

O God, our help in ages past,

How long will SPEEDWELL CAVERN last?

In this dark dale I hear the thunder

    Of houses folding with the shocks,

The GRAND PAVILION buckling under

    The weight of the ROMANTIC ROCKS,

The hardest Blue John ash-trays seem

To melt away in thermal steam.

Deep in their Nonconformist setting

    The shivering children wait their doom—

The father’s whip, the mother’s petting

    In many a coffee-coloured room;

And attic bedrooms shriek with fright,

For dread of Pilgrims of the Night.

Perhaps it’s this that makes me shiver

    As I ascend the slippery path

High, high above the sliding river

    And terraces of Matlock Bath:

A sense of doom, a dread to see

The Rock of Ages cleft for me.