Youth and age in Great King Street

Bright the morning after thunder,

Bright the breakfast spread in King's;

Perigrene selects the plovers'

Eggs, fit offering for lovers,

Lovelorn turtles, brittle things—

Fling the college gates asunder!

Jessica, the college wonder,

To his breakfast glamour brings.

Dull the sky above Edina,

Faint now sounds the Pitt Club's toast;

Darker here the streets, and meaner,

Duller too and rather colder

Are the eyes that now behold her,

Shopping for the Sunday roast.

Less the Kingsmen now, and lesser:

Hawks Club faces fade and pass;

Point-to-points with handsome hearties,

May Week balls and Tatler parties—

Nothing of that here, alas!

Who shall now be her confessor?

Not that cynical Professor,

Middle aged and middle class.

Raise the tone of Gough and Feachem!

Now they'll really have to think;

Lady Gwithian will teach 'em:

But that reprobate Professor,

Saying, ‘Well, she's young: God bless her’,

Just pours out another drink.

‘autumn 1959’

NOTES

• Jessica = novelist Jessica Mann (d. 2018), m Charles Thomas, lecturer Dept of Archaeology, Edinburgh. The Thomas family home was in the Godrevy-Gwithian headland of St Ives Bay, north Cornwall. CT excavated the multi-period site of Gwithian in the 1960s. CT's date for SP's poem (in letter of 10-i-1998)

• From Charles Thomas: ‘Autumn 1959, just after we were married (1-vii-1959)!'. Jessica Thomas: ‘I was aged just 19.’ (letter 24-v-1999). ). [Other sources have JM 22 when they married. Eds]