William Henry Davies (1871-1940) was a Welsh poet and writer; he was one of the most popular poets of his time. He was born in Newport, Monmouthshire.

He was a difficult and somewhat delinquent young man, and after failing to settle as an apprentice, took casual work and travelled. Autobiography of a Super-Tramp is an account of his times in the USA 1893-1899. He lost a foot, while jumping a train, in Canada, and wore a wooden leg.

He returned to England, living a rough life in London in particular. His first book of poetry, in 1905, was the beginning of success and a growing reputation; he drew extensively on his experiences with the seamier side for material. By the time of his prominent place in the Edward Marsh Georgian poetry series, he was an established figure. He is generally best known for two lines from his poem, Leisure:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

He married in 1923 Helen Payne, an ex-prostitute and his junior by three decades; his frank account of how this came about was only published in 1980. They lived quietly in Sussex and Gloucestershire.

Works

• The Soul's Destroyer (1905) poems
• The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908)
• Beggars (1909)
• New Poems (1907),
• Nature Poems (1908),
• Farewell to Poesy (1910),
• Songs of Joy (1911),
• Foliage (1913)
• The Bird of Paradise (1914)
• Raptures (1918) poems
• Shorter Lyrics 1900-1922 (1922, Bodley Head anthology) editor
• Secrets (1924) poems
• The Loneliest Mountain (1939) poems
• Complete Poems (1963)
• Young Emma (1980) autobiography

Poets included in Shorter Lyrics 1900-1922

Lascelles Abercrombie - Richard Aldington - John Alford - George Anderson - Martin Armstrong - Clifford Bax - J. D. Beezley - Hilaire Belloc - A. C. Benson - Henry Bryan Binns - Laurence Binyon - Edmund Blunden - Wilfrid Scawen Blunt - Eva Gore Booth - Gordon Bottomley - Robert Bridges - Rupert Brooke - C. Kennett Burrow - A. Young Campbell - Joseph Campbell - Edward Carpenter - G. K. Chesterton - Richard Church - Padraic Colum - Frances Cornford - A. S. Cripps - Gerald Crow - H. D. - Charles Dalmon - W. H. Davies - Walter De la Mare - Alfred Douglas - John Drinkwater - A. E. - Helen Parry Eden - V. Locke Ellis - Godfrey Elton - Eleanor Farjeon - Michael Field - J. E. Flecker - F. S. Flint - Robin Flower - John Freeman - V. H. Friedlander - Norman Gale - R. L. Gales - Wilfrid Gibson - Louis Golding - Douglas Goldring - Robert Graves - Thomas Hardy - Ralph Hodgson - F. M. Hueffer - Aldous Huxley - Violet Jacob - James Joyce - M. M. Johnson - Rudyard Kipling - D. H. Lawrence - Francis Ledwidge - Shane Leslie - W. M. Letts - S. R. Lysaght - Rose Macaulay - John Masefield - H. J. Massingham - Charlotte Mew - Alice Meynell - Harold Monro - T. Sturge Moore - Thomas Moult - Neil Munro - Henry Newbolt - Robert Nichols - Wallace B. Nichols - Alfred Noyes - Moira O'Neill - Seumas O'Sullivan - Wilfred Owen - Herbert E. Palmer - Douglas Pepler - Victor Plarr - Max Plowman - Ezra Pound - Ernest Rhys - Edgell Rickword - Isaac Rosenberg - Siegfried Sassoon - William Kean Seymour - Edward Shanks - Horace Shipp - Fredegond Shove - Edith Sitwell - Sacheverell Sitwell - C. Hamilton Sorley - J. C. Squire - James Stephens - L. A. G. Strong - Muriel Stuart - Arthur Symons - Edward Thomas - Herbert Trench - W. J. Turner - Katharine Tynan - Evelyn Underhill - M. M. Webster - Anna Wickham - Humbert Wolfe - M. L. Woods - W. B. Yeats

References

• W.H. Davies: A Critical Biography (1963) by Richard Stonesifer
• W.H. Davies by Lawrence Normand