Poet's Pilgrimage

W H Davies, born in Newport in 1871, is famous for his poem Leisure, which opens -"What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare". In A Poet's Pilgrimage, published in 1918, he takes a walking tour from Carmarthen to London. He describes his route and the people he meets - hawkers, tramps, beggars, rag-and-bone men, boxers, sailors. Years earlier Davies fell and crushed his foot while attempting to jump a freight train in Ontario, his lower leg had to be amputated and since then he wore a wooden leg.

• Cover
• Publisher’s Introduction
• Frontspiece
• The Start
• Children
• Old Sailors
• At Swansea
• The Lost Sex
• In Neath Valley
• The Prophetess
• Welsh Song and Prize-Fighting
• The Sin of Mountains
• Playing for Coppers
• Tintern Abbey
• The Rag and Bone Man
• The Blind Boxer
• Old Acquaintance
• A Familiar Country
• A Valley of Industry
• A Long Walk
• William
• The Commercial Travellers
• Wasting Time
• The Hunt
• The Savernake Forest
• The Other Lodger
• Jane’s Shadow
• Slug and Another
• The End