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- The poem satirizes the hypocrisy of churchgoers who only attend services for special occasions like Harvest Festival, contrasting their behavior with the mouse's genuine devotion. It also explores themes of social stratification within the church, with the mouse encountering different types of mice with varying beliefs and motivations.
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"Slough" is a ten-stanza poem by Sir John Betjeman, first published in his 1937 collection Continual Dew. The British town of Slough was used as a dump for war surplus materials in the interwar years, and then abruptly became the home of 850 new factories just before World War II.
Jan 14, 2016 · ‘ Slough ‘. The opening lines of this poem are probably Betjeman’s most famous. Like ‘The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel’ it appeared in Continual Dew.
Betjeman's use of repetitive language and imagery reinforces the sense of stultifying conformity and banality that permeates Slough. The poem's powerful imagery of destruction and rebirth suggests a desire to cleanse the town of its artificiality and make way for something more authentic.
John Betjeman. Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death! Come, bombs and blow to smithereens. Those air -conditioned, bright canteens, Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Slough was written in 1937. The poem is quoted by David Brent in the fifth episode of series 1 of The Office, who posits disparagingly that “he’s probably never been here in his life”.
“Slough” has been read as mean-spirited harangue against a city whose only crime was falling in line behind progress. Of course, any poem that opens for bombs to fall upon a place in an act of merciful destruction is bound to be taken as an assault upon that location.
Sir John Betjeman, CBE (/ ˈ b ɛ tʃ ə m ən /; 28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death.
