This characeristaclly rhythmic poem by John Betjeman was included in Radio 3's Christmas Day edition of Words & Music.
Quite apart from its other qualities it earns a place in my haphazard anthology of poems which use the words 'mathematics' or 'statistics'.
Bristol
Green upon the flooded Avon shone the after-storm-wet-sky
Quick the struggling withy branches let the leaves of autumn fly
And a star shone over Bristol, wonderfully far and high.
Ringers in an oil-lit belfry - Bitton? Kelston? who shall say? -
Smoothly practicing a plain course, caverned out the dying day
As their melancholy music flooded up and ebbed away,
Then all Somerset was around me and I saw the clippers ride,
High above the moonlit houses, triple-masted on the tide,
By the tall embattled church-towers of Bristol waterside.
And an undersong to branches dripping into pools and wells
Out of multitudes of elm trees over leagues of hill and dells
Was the mathematic pattern of a plain course on the bells.
