What is this life?

W. H. Davies was a phenomenon of whom, it seems, few nowadays have heard. His lines, ‘What is this life if, full of care,/ We have no time to stand and stare?’ were quoted with approval in the local pub the other day, but nobody knew who wrote them. In 1996 that poem, ‘Leisure’, was voted 14th most popular in the English language, ahead of Marvell and Blake.

Davies was indeed a phenomenon because, for at least ten years of his life, he was a non-writing, non-reading tramp. Not a ‘hobo’, who looks around for casual labour, not a slumming would-be author in search of copy, but a genuine, non-diary-keeping, begging-his-way tramp, in England, the United States and Canada, keeping company with the likes of Three-Fingered Jack and Detroit Fatty, sleeping in doss-houses when he could and in the open air (or in jail) when he couldn’t. He certainly gave himself plenty of non-working leisure, but whether he had much time to stare is doubtful.