Portrait Of A Barmaid

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell 1887 (Scarborough) – 1964 (Weedon Lois)



Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar

Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.

Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles —

Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).

The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light

In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery

For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane

In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!

Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat —

A concertina's glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green

Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 26, 2023

37 sec read
58

Quick analysis:

Scheme AA BB CC DD BB EE FF EB GG FX HH
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 748
Words 123
Stanzas 11
Stanza Lengths 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell

Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess. She never married but became passionately attached to Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, and her home was always open to London's poetic circle, to whom she was generous and helpful. Sitwell published poetry continuously from 1913, some of it abstract and set to music. With her dramatic style and exotic costumes, she was sometimes labelled a poseur, but her work was praised for its solid technique and painstaking craftsmanship. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal. more…

All Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell poems | Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell Books

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