Edith Sitwell and Stephen Spender in 'Orion' (1945). (poets)

Edith Sitwell's The Poet Laments the Coming of Old Age appeared in the first volume of Orion, A Miscellany, edited by Rosamond Lehman, Edwin Muir, Denys Kilman Roberts, and C. Day Lewis (1945), 28-9. There are a few revisions, the word 'aged' in lines 3 and 32 becoming 'aged' in her Collected Poems (1957) (hereafter CP) and 'bear' in line 31 becoming 'wear'. A footnote in Orion is omitted: 'Verse 4, lines 1 and 2 ["The gold Appearances from Nothing rise/In sleep, by day . . ."], were inspired by this phrase from Plato's The Sophist: Stranger: The appearances which spring up of themselves in sleep or by day, such as a shadow when darkness arises in a fire . . .'. A definitive …