A virtuoso of self-loathing

I haven't hope. I haven't faith.
I live two lives and sometimes three.
The lives I live make life a death
For those who have to live with me.
Knowing the virtues that I lack,
I pat myself upon the back.

John Betjeman was a virtuoso of self-loathing – and one who was penetrating enough to know that his self-loathing was also a form of self-regard ('I pat myself upon the back'). The stanza above comes from a longer poem, 'Guilt', and I happened upon it in a new book on Betjeman that I'm reading for review (so had better not say much more). 
Here is 'Guilt' in its bleak entirety – 

The clock is frozen in the tower,
The thickening fog with sooty smell
Has blanketed the motor power
Which turns the London streets to hell;
And footsteps with their lonely sound
Intensify the silence round.

I haven't hope. I haven't faith.
I live two lives and sometimes three.
The lives I live make life a death
For those who have to live with me.
Knowing the virtues that I lack,
I pat myself upon the back.

With breastplate of self-righteousness
And shoes of smugness on my feet,
Before the urge in me grows less
I hurry off to make retreat.
For somewhere, somewhere, burns a light
To lead me out into the night.

It glitters icy, thin and plain,
And leads me down to Waterloo –
Into a warm electric train
Which travels sorry Surrey through,
And crystal-hung, the clumps of pine
Stand deadly still beside the line.

'Waterloo' comes as something of a shock, a touch of bathos, and 'sorry Surrey' is a bit tricksy – and unfair on my home county. But 'Guilt' is still a powerful piece of work, and a very long way from the cheery nostalgia and easy charm of Betjeman's more popular poems. He was always a much more complex and interesting poet, and man, than the avuncular teddy bear beloved of the TV chat-show circuit – for which persona, and for his popular success, he also, inevitably, hated himself.