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Dame Edith Sitwell
Portrait of Sitwell by Roger Fry

Today is the birthday of Edith Sitwell (Edith Louisa Sitwell; Scarborough, North Yorkshire; 7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964 London); poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells.  Like her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell, Edith reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents, and lived for much of her life with her governess.  She never married, but became passionately attached to the Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew.  Sitwell published poetry continuously from 1913, some of it abstract and set to music.

She died of cerebral haemorrhage at St Thomas’ Hospital on 9 December 1964 at the age of 77. She is buried in the churchyard of Weedon Lois in Northamptonshire.  Sitwell’s papers are held at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

Verse

Clowns’ Houses (1918)

• The busy chatter of the heat
  Shrilled like a parakeet;
  And shuddering at the noonday light
  The dust lay dead and white
• As powder on a mummy’s face,
  Or fawned with simian grace
  Round booths with many a hard bright toy
  And wooden brittle joy:
• The cap and bells of Time the Clown
  That, jangling, whistled down
  Young cherubs hidden in the guise
  Of every bird that flies;
• And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
  Lest any dream that fare
  — Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
  Hints of Reality.

• Tall windows show Infinity;
  And, hard reality,
  The candles weep and pry and dance
  Like lives mocked at by Chance.
• The rooms are vast as Sleep within;
  When once I ventured in,
  Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
  Slowly enveloped me.
  • “Clowns’ Houses”

The Wooden Pegasus (1920)

• Within your magic web of hair, lies furled
  The fire and splendour of the ancient world;
  The dire gold of the comet’s wind-blown hair;
  The songs that turned to gold the evening air
  When all the stars of heaven sang for joy.
  • “The Web of Eros”

Façades (1922)

• White as a winding sheet,
  Masks blowing down the street:
  Moscow, Paris London, Vienna — all are undone.
  The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
  Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
  The world’s floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.
  • “The Last Gallop”

• Oh how the Vacancy
  Laughed at them rushing by.
  “Turn again, flesh and brain,
  Only yourselves again!
  How far above the ape
  Differing in each shape,
  You with your regular
  Meaningless circles are!”
  • “Switchback”

Green Song & Other Poems (1944)

Heart and Mind

• The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
  Is greater than all gold, more powerful
  Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
  Like all that grows or leaps… so is the heart
  More powerful than all dust.

• The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
  Is but a foolish wind.

• Remember only this of our hopeless love
  That never till Time is done
  Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.

The Canticle of the Rose (1949)

The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems, 1920-1947 (1949)

• Mother or Murderer, you have
  given or taken life —
  Now all is one!
  • “Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise”

• Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the
  Light —
  The marrow in the bone
  We dreamed was safe. . . the blood in the veins, the
  sap in the tree
  Were springs of Deity.
  • “Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise”

• The living blind and seeing Dead together lie
  As if in love . . . There was no more hating then,
  And no more love; Gone is the heart of Man.
  • “Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb: Dirge for the New Sunrise”