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.

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