What sweet, what happy days had I,
When dreams made Time Eternity!

William Henry Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer. He spent many years as a tramp in the United States and United Kingdom but became known as one of the most popular poets of his time. He was admired by George Bernard Shaw, who wrote the preface of his autobiography, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908).

Quotes

• Autumn grows old: he, like some simple one,
  In Summer's castaway is strangely clad
  • Autumn.

• The collier's wife had four tall sons
  Brought from the pit's mouth dead,
  And crushed from foot to head
  • The Collier's Wife.

• From my own kind I only learn
  How foolish comfort is
  • Comfort.

• Thou shalt not laugh, thou shalt not romp,
  Let's grimly kiss with bated breath;
  As quietly and solemnly
  As Life when it is kissing Death.
  • A Fleeting Passion.

• They sniffed, poor things, for their green fields,
  They cried so loud I could not sleep:
  For fifty thousand shillings down
  I would not sail again with sheep.
  • Sheep.

• Sweet Stay-at-Home, sweet Well-content,
  Thou knowest of no strange continent;
  Thou hast not felt thy bosom keep
  A gentle motion with the deep;
  Thou hast not sailed in Indian seas,
  Where scent comes forth in every breeze.
  • Sweet Stay-at-Home.

• What sweet, what happy days had I,
  When dreams made Time Eternity!
  • The Time of Dreams.

Quotes about Davies

• this extraordinary and memorable being, who, for all his humility, bore about him something of the primitive splendour and directness of the Elizabethan age
  • Osbert Sitwell, Introduction to The Complete Poems of W. H. Davies, p. xxxiv

External links

• Works by W. H. Davies at Project Gutenberg
• BBC South East Wales Arts report