{"id":1858,"date":"2010-04-20T17:52:34","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T17:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2017-06-10T16:46:09","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T16:46:09","slug":"charles-causley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/?p=1858","title":{"rendered":"The salting sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anybody searching Teignmouth for the ghost of John Keats is following a well-trodden path. Charles Causley<\/a> wrote a poem inspired by his visit in the 1950s:<\/p>\n

Keats at Teignmouth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Spring, 1818<\/em>
\nBy the wild sea-wall I wandered
\nBlinded by the salting sun,
\nWhile the sulky Channel thundered
\nLike an old Trafalgar gun.<\/p>\n

And I watched the gaudy river
\nUnder trees of lemon-green,
\nCoiling like a scarlet bugle
\nThrough the valley of the Teign.<\/p>\n

When spring fired her fusilladoes
\nSalt-spray, sea-spray on the sill,
\nWhen the budding scarf of April
\nRavelled on the Devon hill,<\/p>\n

Then I saw the crystal poet
\nLeaning on the old sea-rail;
\nIn his breast lay death, the lover,
\nIn his head the nightingale.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Charles Causley, Collected Poems 1951 – 2000<\/em><\/p>\n

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’<\/em> conjures up a vivid image of the river laden with soil after days of rain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[210,184,181,229,63,177,13,182,37,187,183,70,178],"class_list":["post-1858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-back-beach","tag-boats","tag-books","tag-causley","tag-coast","tag-keats","tag-literary-britain","tag-poem","tag-poetry","tag-rivers","tag-shaldon","tag-teign","tag-teignmouth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3067,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions\/3067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.engrailed.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}