When in the mines of dark and silent thought
Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there,
With heavy labour to the surface brought
That lie and mock me in the brighter air,
Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty,
Unfit for working or to be refined,
That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye,
I turn away from that base cave, the mind.
Yet had I but the power to crush the stone
There are strange metals hid in flakes therein,
Each flake a spark sole-hidden and alone,
That only cunning, toilsome chemists win.
All this I know, and yet my chemistry
Fails and the pregnant treasures useless lie.
_Osbert Sitwell_
Born in London, December 6th, 1892, Osbert Sitwell (son of Sir George
Sitwell and brother of Edith Sitwell) was educated at Eton and became
an officer in the Grenadier Guards, with whom he served in France for
various periods from 1914 to 1917.
His first contributions appeared in _Wheels_ (an annual anthology of a
few of the younger radical writers, edited by his sister) and
disclosed an ironic and strongly individual touch. That impression is
strengthened by a reading of _Argonaut and Juggernaut_ (1920), where
Sitwell's cleverness and satire are fused. His most remarkable though
his least brilliant poems are his irregular and fiery protests against
smugness and hypocrisy. But even Sitwell's more conventional poetry
has a freshness of movement and definiteness of outline.