sidney keyes in historical perspective Her grave stands open to the sky;
Andthere she lies together with
The shattered limbs and bleeding mouths
And eyes that nevermore shall see.^77This is a good try, but no more. It is necessary to quote it because it is ‘people’s
poetry’ as Rosenberg’s and Douglas’s and Keyes’s is not; and People’s Poetry is
at present heavily and polemically called upon in denunciations ofelitism. In the ́
context of this demand, Private Rosenberg, the small-statured poverty-stricken East
End Jew, is almost certainly anelitist; as Keyes and Douglas also are. ́^78
Michael Schmidt writes that Douglas’s rhythms ‘are original in the way they
advance speaking and are not betrayed into singing cadences’.^79 But this is unfair
to the singing cadence. There is more to it than ‘betrayal’; in any case, the
speaking voice has its own systems of betrayal, as is demonstrated by many poets
from ‘Movement’ to Mersey Sound.^80 Historically, of course, these are the voice
rhythms that have won out over the style of Keyes, which is essentially one of
elegiac declamation. It is appropriate to return here to Charles Williams’s ‘the
sense which poetry has of its own vigil before its own approaching greatness’. I
would describe most of Keyes’s poems as vigils, and vigils that are aware of an
approaching greatness, even if Keyes did not live long enough to fulfil his quest.
Keyes’s ‘vigil’ poems occur throughout his work, and include ‘Nocturne for Four
Voices’, ‘Lament for Dead Symbolists’, ‘Elegy for Mrs. Virginia Woolf’, ‘Europe’s
Prisoners’, ‘A Garland for John Clare’, ‘All Souls: A Dialogue’, ‘Schiller Dying’,
‘The Foreign Gate’, ‘Lament for Adonis’, ‘Lament for Harpsichord: The Flowering
Orchards’, ‘Two Offices of a Sentry’, ‘The Expected Guest’, ‘Actaeon’s Lament’, and
‘The Wilderness’.
(^77) Major Robert Crisp, ‘The Shell’, inBrazen Chariots(New York: Bantam Books, 1978), 186–7.
The verses are attributed by the author to Captain Browne, Royal Tank Regiment.
(^78) Rosenberg to Ruth Lowy, in ̈ The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg, ed. Ian Parsons (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1979), 185: ‘Nothing is rarer than good poetry—and nothing more discouraging
than the writing of poetry. One might write for pleasure but I doubt[,] if there is no stronger motive[,]
whether one would be incited to ambitious work.’
Keyes, ‘Artist in Society’, 149: ‘It is no use giving ‘‘art to the people’’ while the structure of society,
which prevents the mass of people from appreciating good art, remains unchanged. In an insecure,
unplanned society such as ours, no one has a right to complain that art is obscure or out of touch with
the people.’
Douglas, ‘Poets in This War’, inThe Letters, ed. Desmond Graham (Manchester: Carcanet, 2000),
351: ‘So far I have not mentioned the name of a poet ‘‘of the present war’’. I might refuse to on the
grounds that it is unnecessary: for I do not find even one who stands out as an individual....There
have been desperately intelligent conscientious objectors, R.A.M.C. orderlies, students. In the fourth
year of this war we have not a single poet who seems likely to be an impressive commentator on it.’ 79
Michael Schmidt,Lives of the Poets(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), 801.
(^80) See e.g. Robert Conquest (ed.),New Lines(London: Macmillan, 1956),passim, uses of ‘yet’, ‘but’,
‘so’, ‘we’, ‘our’. See alsoThe Mersey Sound, Penguin Modern Poets, 10 (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1983; 1st pub. 1967),passim.