{"id":3074,"date":"2025-01-23T18:46:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T18:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/?p=3074"},"modified":"2025-01-23T18:46:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T18:46:47","slug":"death-in-leamington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/23\/death-in-leamington\/","title":{"rendered":"Death In Leamington"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 class=\"title vcard item otitle_8493417\"><\/h1>\n<div class=\"poem_body\">\n<div class=\"orig_8493417\">She died in the upstairs bedroom<br \/>\nBy the light of the ev&#8217;ning star<br \/>\nThat shone through the plate glass window<br \/>\nFrom over Leamington Spa<\/p>\n<p>Beside her the lonely crochet<br \/>\nLay patiently and unstirred,<br \/>\nBut the fingers that would have work&#8217;d it<br \/>\nWere dead as the spoken word.<\/p>\n<p>And Nurse came in with the tea-things<br \/>\nBreast high &#8216;mid the stands and chairs-<br \/>\nBut Nurse was alone with her own little soul,<br \/>\nAnd the things were alone with theirs.<\/p>\n<p>She bolted the big round window,<br \/>\nShe let the blinds unroll,<br \/>\nShe set a match to the mantle,<br \/>\nShe covered the fire with coal.<\/p>\n<p>And &#8220;Tea!&#8221; she said in a tiny voice<br \/>\n&#8220;Wake up! It&#8217;s nearly five&#8221;<br \/>\nOh! Chintzy, chintzy cheeriness,<br \/>\nHalf dead and half alive.<\/p>\n<p>Do you know that the stucco is peeling?<br \/>\nDo you know that the heart will stop?<br \/>\nFrom those yellow Italianate arches<br \/>\nDo you hear the plaster drop?<\/p>\n<p>Nurse looked at the silent bedstead,<br \/>\nAt the gray, decaying face,<br \/>\nAs the calm of a Leamington ev&#8217;ning<br \/>\nDrifted into the place.<\/p>\n<p>She moved the table of bottles<br \/>\nAway from the bed to the wall;<br \/>\nAnd tiptoeing gently over the stairs<br \/>\nTurned down the gas in the hall.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>John Betjeman<\/div>\n<div>(the only poem he ever wrote)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She died in the upstairs bedroom By the light of the ev&#8217;ning star That shone through the plate glass window From over Leamington Spa Beside her the lonely crochet Lay patiently and unstirred, But the fingers that would have work&#8217;d it Were dead as the spoken word. And Nurse came in with the tea-things Breast&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1124,1123],"class_list":["post-3074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily","tag-death-in-leamington-spa","tag-john-betjeman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3075,"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3074\/revisions\/3075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daniel.footstepsbooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}