of the English master. He was a bad and weak pupil in every subject
but English, where he was exceptionally brilliant. He revealed his
literary and artistic gifts in school activities: he animated the
Reading and Debating Societies, and the dramatic group was
proud of his acting in the role of Oliver Cromwell in Drinkwater's
play, and of Roberts in Strife by Galsworthy. In 1929, he became
the editor of the school magazine to which he contributed
generously: stories, light verse, parodies of modern poets like
Osbert Sitwell, Sassoon and Yeats, an article about modern poetry,
written at fifteen, and no less than twenty-six poems in six years.
Most of them already reveal his emotional and imaginative nature,
witness this poem written by the small boy of Form 3:

Rose-red banners across the dawn
Brown sails at sea on a misty morn,
Racing shadows across the corn,
These are the things that I love.

First dim star in the twilight hour,
Drenchings sweet of the hawthorn flower,
Wall-flower kissed by a silver shower,
And the clear blue sky above.

Wistful song as the shadows fall,
The whisper of trees and soft bird call
A glimmering moon -- and over all
The tang of a wind from the sea.

or two 'Images' written in 1931, and already more original:

Here is the bright green sea,
And underneath a thousand fishes
Moving their scaly bodies soundlessly
Among a bright green world of weeds.

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