Anybody searching Teignmouth for the ghost of John Keats is following a well-trodden path. Charles Causley wrote a poem inspired by his visit in the 1950s:
Keats at Teignmouth
Spring, 1818
By the wild sea-wall I wandered
Blinded by the salting sun,
While the sulky Channel thundered
Like an old Trafalgar gun.
And I watched the gaudy river
Under trees of lemon-green,
Coiling like a scarlet bugle
Through the valley of the Teign.
When spring fired her fusilladoes
Salt-spray, sea-spray on the sill,
When the budding scarf of April
Ravelled on the Devon hill,
Then I saw the crystal poet
Leaning on the old sea-rail;
In his breast lay death, the lover,
In his head the nightingale.
© Charles Causley, Collected Poems 1951 – 2000
Shaldon village and surrounding hillsides (above) photographed from Back Beach, Teignmouth, 20 April 2010. Due to the late spring this year there wasn’t much evidence of new foliage to be seen, but the weather was a good deal better than Causley (and Keats) experienced – the line ‘coiling like a scarlet bugle’ conjures up a vivid image of the river laden with soil after days of rain.