MARGINAL COMMENT

By HAROLD NICOLSON

IT is sometimes said that this war, unlike the last, has produced no outstanding poet. I doubt whether this is a correct assertion. The poetry of Sidney Keyes, for instance, is certainly valuable poetry ; once we have had time to assimilate it, we may pronounce its value to be great. There is little of it to judge by, and yet that little is complete in itself. We have the volume called The Iron Laurel which Routledge published in 1942. We have the collection of poems which the same publisher issued recently Sunder the title The Cruel Solstice. There must exist in some form the morality play which Keyes wrote and produced at Oxford in 1941. There are memories and letters. It is possible, even from this scant material, to form some impression of the quality of his genius and to trace the development of his mind and taste. The first point about Sidney Keyes is his astounding precocity ; he acquired the mastery of his inspiration and technique when scarcely more than a child. His poem, for instance, on The Buzzard, with its very intricate geo- metrical scheme, is hmclled with complete and muscular assurance. I have been told that he composed that poem, and very rapidly, when he was no more than a schoolboy of seventeen. It was written to fill a blank space in the school magazine ; his tutor, to whom he showed it, saw at once that it was worthy of a more discriminating audience and advised him to send it to some London periodical. In his innocence and modesty Keyes sent the poem by the same post to three different editors ; to his astonishment it was simultaneously accepted by all three ; difficult explanations followed. The story is illustrative of boyish diffidence and underlying certitude of mind. For in 'truth his poetic gift was born fully armed: while still a stripling he strode in iron intellectual armour across the stones.

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I never knew Sidney Keyes. It is possible that, lecturing one afternoon at Tonbridge School, I may have noted those black eyes among the blur of faces below me and have observed his dark and shining hair tumbling over the pale forehead. If so, I have no recol- lection of the event. But since my first surprise at reading his poems I have been at pains to trace the threads of his short history. He was born at Dartford in Kent. His mother died at his birth, and for some years he lived with his grandfather, Mr. S. K. Keyes—a capable and tempestuous old man for whom he had a deep affection. His father married a second time and Sidney Keyes found in his step- mother almost all that he had lost when he was born. He was sent to Dartford Grammar School, a dark and frail and rather lonely little boy. His family ate' the time imagined that he would become a biologist, since he would spend hours in the shed beside the mill playing with his collection of reptillia, his lizards, tortoises and snakes. He moved to Tonbridge School, where he was placed in the lowest form. It was then, quite suddenly, that his genius blossomed. He was fortunate in attracting the attention of Mr. Tom Staveley, who became his tutor and his intimate friend. Almost at once he began to write poetry ; Tonbridge is a civilised school, and although Keyes was never an athlete, although a contemporary describes him as " timorous-eyed," he gained the respect and eyed the admiration of his fellows. His sensitiveness, which was acute, was mitigated by robust self-certainty ; he was quiet but secure. He went to Oxford with a scholarship at Queen's and obtained an effortless first-class in history. His two years at the University were years of varied activity. He wrote and produced a morality play ; he edited for Routledge a volume of Eight Oxford Poets ; he indulged in under- graduate journalism ; in loose untidy clothes he would roam for hours through the Oxfordshire countryside ; and in the intervals of hard study he underwent his military training. The centre of his life was always poetry ; his great adventures were the discovery of John Clare, of Yeats, of Rainer Maria Rilke, of the Provence of van Gogh. He was neither a natural nor an unhappy warrior ; he found in military discipline the pleasure of orderly social co-operation. .He joined the Royal West Kent Regiment, was sent to Africa, and was killed, at the age of twenty, on Longstop Hill.

In some ways Sidney Keyes was typical of his generation. He was sensitive, of course, and most inquisitive ; he mentions his " hedgehog skin of nerves " even as he mentions his "over-curious

• mind." Although he had his moments when he admired those romantics who " fly falcons at the angry sun," yet his images are metallic rather than coloured. His pessimism was at moments that of a generation which believes itself to be lost between a dead and an unborn work': " I see a black time coming, history Tending in footnotes our forgotten land.

Hearing the once-virginal But ageing choirs of intellect Sing a psalm that would appall Our certain fathers, I expect No gentle decadence, no right effect Of falling, but itself the barren fall: And Yeats' gold songbird shouting over all."

In his lovely lines to John Clare he seems to share the unearned guilt of his generation, the " responsibility for the world's disease." But even in his forsakenness there is no note of self-pity, no surrender:

" Those flowering orchards, 0 to save those orchards Of starred illusion from the climbing blight. . . . "

He knows that, in place of the chance of life, he has been given the certitude of death:

" If we could be alone for a moment only While the spring grows, while blossoms fight Within the bud . . .

If we had met before And in another place, what wonders might we see

Sheltered by days and faces, under a flowering tree? "

He shares with others of his age a dark resentment at the denial of opportunity; but with him resentment is no mere mood of irritation ;

it has about it a solemn tone of fate.

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It is not, therefore, his amazing poetic skill only which differen- tiates Sidney Keyes from so many of his contemporaries, but above all his grave acceptance of the tragedy to which his youth was destined. It is not war only which appalls him: The captive brain, the feet that walk to war

The ironbound brain, the hand unskilled in war The shrinking brain, sick of an inner war."

He has a firm sense of courage:

"The fifes cry death an-1 the sharp winds call. Set your face to the rock • go on, go out Into the bad lands of battle, into the cloud-wall Of the future, my friends, and leave your fear."

But he is obsessed by the dread of pain, the certainty of death : " See

How I believed in pain, how near I got To living pain, regaining my lost image Of hard perfection, sexless and immortal."

And a tragic import is giVen to his poetry by his deep premoniuo.: that he also must die in Africa: " and the tall miraculous city that I walked in will never house me ":

" The bright waves scour the wound of Carthage. • The shadows of gulls run spiderlike through Carthage. The cohorts of the sand are wearing Carthage Hollow and desolate as a turning wave ; But the bronze eagle has flown east from Rome. Rome remember, remember the seafowls sermon That followed the beaked ships westward to their triumph, 0 Rome, you city of soldiers, remember the singers That cry with dead voices along the African shore." * . * * * A man of his intellect, a man of his poetic certainty, might have pierced the cloud of uselessness which keeps the sunshine from our younger men. Sidney Keyes was killed before he reached man- hood ; but he has left behind him something that is most powerful and lovely: " A boy's voice flowering out of silence Rising through choirs to the ear's whorled shrine . And living there, a light."