Information
Sidney Keyes was recognized as one of the most promising poets of his generation but was killed during the Second World War while on active service in Tunisia before his work could reach maturity. He was born in Dartford where he was largely brought up by his grandfather when his mother died shortly after his birth and his father remarried. Keyes’s grandfather, also called Sidney, was a prominent Dartford citizen and local historian who had built up a successful milling business. Young Sidney lived with him in his large house ‘The Dene’ on Dene Road. Much of Keyes’s solitary youth was spent wandering in the fields and woods which in those days were close by; it was here that he began to acquire the love of birds and other pastoral ideas which often feature in his poems. He attended a preparatory school in the town in 1931 and then after a brief stay with his father and new wife returned in 1933 to live with his grandparents and attended Dartford Grammar School until 1935 when he won a scholarship to Tonbridge School where his father had been a pupil. Here his talent was recognized and encouraged. The poem he wrote at sixteen about the death of his grandfather encompassed already some of the themes to which he returned in maturer works. He disliked being called a ‘war poet’; the concern with death and the harking back to a distant past which characterized many of his poems appeared in his work right from the beginning.
Quotations
Elegy
(In memoriam S.K.K)
…
It is a year again since they poured
The dumb ground into your mouth:
And yet we know, by some recurring word
Or look caught unawares, that you still drive
Our thoughts like the smart cobs of your youth-
When you and the world were alive.
A year again, and we have fallen on bad times
Since they gave you to the worms.
I am ashamed to take delight in these rhymes
Without grief; but you need no tears.
We shall never forget nor escape you, nor make terms
With your enemies, the swift departing years.
Place | Extract |
| Dartford | Much of Keyes’s solitary youth was spent wandering in the fields and woods which in those days were close by; it was here that he began to acquire the love of birds and other pastoral ideas which often feature in his poems... |
