WORDSWORTH features frequently in this spot, but here is poem about him.

The writer, Sidney Keyes (1922-1943), a rising talent at Oxford, was killed in the North African campaign, tragically young. His debut collection, The Iron Laurel, was published in 1942 and his Collected Poems in 1945. The sonnet has an elegiac tone - perhaps prophetic about himself.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

No room for mourning: he's gone out

Into the noisy glen, or stands between the stones

Of the gaunt ridge, or you'll hear his shout

Rolling among the screes, he being a boy again.

He'll never fail nor die

And if they laid his bones

In the wet vaults or iron sarcophagi

Of fame, he'd rise at the first summer rain

And stride across the hills to seek

His rest among the broken lands and clouds.

He was a stormy day, a granite peak

Spearing the sky; and look, about its base

Words flower like crocuses in the hanging woods,

Blank though the dalehead and the bony face.