So faint, no ear is sure it hears,
So faint and far;
So vast that very near appears
My voice, both here and in each star
Unmeasured leagues do bridge between;
Like that which on a face is seen
Where secrets are;
Sweeping, like veils of lofty balm,
Tresses unbound
O'er desert sand, o'er ocean calm,
I am wherever is not sound;
And, goddess of the truthful face,
My beauty doth instil its grace
That joy abound.
_William H. Davies_
According to his own biography, William H. Davies was born in a
public-house called Church House at Newport, in the County of
Monmouthshire, April 20, 1870, of Welsh parents. He was, until Bernard
Shaw "discovered" him, a cattleman, a berry-picker, a panhandler--in
short, a vagabond. In a preface to Davies' second book, _The
Autobiography of a Super-Tramp_ (1906), Shaw describes how the
manuscript came into his hands:
"In the year 1905 I received by post a volume of poems by one William
H. Davies, whose address was The Farm House, Kensington, S. E. I was
surprised to learn that there was still a farmhouse left in
Kensington; for I did not then suspect that the Farm House, like the
Shepherdess Walks and Nightingale Lane and Whetstone Parks of Bethnal
Green and Holborn, is so called nowadays in irony, and is, in fact, a
doss-house, or hostelry, where single men can have a night's lodging,
for, at most, sixpence.... The author, as far as I could guess, had
walked into a printer's or stationer's shop; handed in his manuscript;
and ordered his book as he might have ordered a pair of boots. It was
marked 'price, half a crown.' An accompanying letter asked me very
civilly if I required a half-crown book of verses; and if so, would I
please send the author the half crown: if not, would I return the
book. This was attractively simple and sensible. I opened the book,
and was more puzzled than ever; for before I had read three lines I
perceived that the author was a real poet. His work was not in the
least strenuous or modern; there was indeed no sign of his ever having
read anything otherwise than as a child reads.... Here, I saw, was a
genuine innocent, writing odds and ends of verse about odds and ends
of things; living quite out of the world in which such things are
usually done, and knowing no better (or rather no worse) than to get
his book made by the appropriate craftsman and hawk it round like any
other ware."
It is more than likely that Davies' first notoriety as a tramp-poet
who had ridden the rails in the United States and had had his right
foot cut off by a train in Canada, obscured his merits as a genuine
singer. Even his early _The Soul's Destroyer_ (1907) revealed that
simplicity which is as _naif_ as it is strange. The volumes that
followed are more clearly melodious, more like the visionary wonder of
Blake, more artistically artless.
With the exception of "The Villain," which has not yet appeared in
book form, the following poems are taken from _The Collected Poems of
W. H. Davies_ (1916) with the permission of the publisher, Alfred A.
Knopf.