Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

WH DAVIES

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no notes or coins to spare?

No time to stand in B & Q,
(As if we'd better things to do):

No time to see, when shops we pass,
Where markets 'educate' the mass:

No time to see, in neon light,
Stores full of dross and tat and shite:

No time to turn at Xmart's glance,
And watch her pornographic dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Open the purse of any man?

A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time for better ware.

THE SOLITARY WALKER

Swamp Fever

From chapter 14 of The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp:

I don't know what possessed me to walk out of this town, instead of taking a train, but this I did, to my regret. For I became too weak to move, and, coming to a large swamp, I left the railroad and crawled into it, and for three days and the same number of nights, lay there without energy to continue my journey. Wild hungry hogs were there, who approached dangerously near, but ran snorting away when my body moved. A score or more buzzards had perched waiting on the branches above me, and I knew that the place was teeming with snakes. I suffered from a terrible thirst, and drank of the swamp-pools, stagnant water that was full of germs, and had the colours of the rainbow, one dose of which would have poisoned some men to death. When the chill was upon me, I crawled into the hot sun, and lay there shivering with the cold; and when the hot fever possessed me, I crawled back into the shade. Not a morsel to eat for four days, and very little for several days previous ...

Now I thought I felt bad earlier this year camping wet and bedraggled in a rainswept Borrowdale having eaten a dodgy pie in Keswick! But this graphic account of the Mississippi swamplands puts it all in perspective, even if Davies was known for embellishing his tales somewhat ...

Super Tramp

There's a long history of parody and pastiche in literature - from Cervantes to Wendy Cope. And it's not often you find these two writers sharing the same sentence! Yesterday's parody of WH Davies (1871-1940) was a little unfair. I actually like Davies's poem and did not really intend to mock it - as parodies usually do - but to use it as a way of taking a poke at the Dreadful Vice of Shopping (Outdoors shops excluded, naturally). Davies's original poem Leisure (What is this life if, full of care,/We have no time to stand and stare? etc) has been much-anthologised, though it's difficult to recall another poem of his that stands out - most of them fall into the category of unmemorable 'Georgian' verse. But I do remember reading some years ago his acclaimed memoir The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908), an account of 6 years (1893-99) during which Davies begged and walked and jumped trains across North America, genuinely living as a hobo. This life of vagrancy led to the loss of a leg when he tried to jump a train in Canada and miscalculated. And on the subject of legs, my own's horizontal and healing nicely!

Pleasure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no notes or coins to spare?

No time to stand in B and queue
(As if we'd better things to do!):

No time to see, when shops we pass,
Where markets "educate" the mass:

No time to see, in neon light,
Stores full of dross and tat and shite:

No time to turn at Xmart's glance
And watch her pornographic dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Open the purse of any man?

A poor life this, if full of care,
We have no time for better ware.


With apologies to WH DAVIES ...