Words, words, words

I dipped into Poets of Our Time this morning and read John Betjeman's London. Here is the last fourteen lines:

'Twas not, I think, a conscious search for God
That brought me to these dim forgotten fanes.
Largely it was a longing for the past,
With a slight sense of something unfulfilled;
And yet another feeling drew me there,
A sense of guilt increasing with the years -
'When I am dead you will be sorry, John' -
Here I could pray my mother would not die.
Thus were my London Sundays incomplete
If unaccompanied by Evening Prayer.
How trivial used to seem the Underground,
How worldly looked the over-lighted west,
How different and smug and wise I felt
When from the east I made my journey home

I consulted the Chambers English Dictionary see what it said about "fane". Dad had a copy of Chambers 20thCentury Dictionary he dipped into when completing cryptic crossword puzzles. He said it contained a good selection of unusual words more often found in larger dictionaries. I've since obtained a copy of the compact OED and in the past had a copy of the American Heritage dictionary. I've never had the inclination to buy a Merriam-Webster . . .

Words, Words, Words I thought was the title of Jean Paul Sartre's autobiography but a quick search disabused me of that notion. It is Les Mots (Words).

Some words I've had to look up in the past include desuetude, crapulous, pranked, caducity, esurient, catamite . . .
And some of my favourite words - mellifluous, horizon, crepuscular, amanuensis (I wish I had one of those)

The dictionary is always close by. I need to use it more often. Fane? a temple. Oh I miss John Ciardi.