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.
THE BLIND PEDLAR
I stand alone through each long day
Upon these pavers; cannot see
The wares spread out upon this tray
—For God has taken sight from me!
Many a time I've cursed the night
When I was born. My peering eyes
Have sought for but one ray of light
To pierce the darkness. When the skies
Rain down their first sweet April showers
On budding branches; when the morn
Is sweet with breath of spring and flowers,
I've cursed the night when I was born.
But now I thank God, and am glad
For what I cannot see this day
—The young men cripples, old, and sad,
With faces burnt and torn away;
Or those who, growing rich and old,
Have battened on the slaughter,
Whose faces, gorged with blood and gold,
Are creased in purple laughter!
PROGRESS
The city's heat is like a leaden pall—
Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air
Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare
Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall
Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,
Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,
Of silver bodies bathing in a pool;
Or trees that whisper in some far, small town
Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that gold
Was merely metal, not a grave of mould
In which men bury all that's fine and fair.
When they could chase the jewelled butterfly
Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh
For all the future held so rich and rare;
When, though they knew it not, their baby cries
Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.
