In the week where writers of verse were celebrated for World Poetry Day, Martin Wade recalls Newport’s famous poet WH Davies and his account of his travels in Gwent.

FAMOUS as the Newport poet whose poem ‘Leisure’ is known the world over, WH Davies was born in Pill in 1871. He returned to Gwent when he walked across South Wales writing his account ‘A Poet’s Pilgrimage’ in 1918.

The book tells us much about the poet and the places of Gwent he visited almost a hundred years ago. It also tells us much about what drove the man who wrote the famous lines ‘What is this world if full of care/We have no time to stand and stare’.

By 1918, although WH Davies was a successful poet but his progress had not been easy. Born in Portland Street in Pill, he went to live with his grandparents at Church House Inn on the same street when his parents died. A plaque fixed to the wall tells of its famous link. He had left Newport many times to seek his fortune in America only to return empty-handed. He lived the life of a drifter, walking from town to town.

It was on his last visit to the States attracted by the Clondike gold rush that his foot was crushed by a train and his leg had to be amputated. His later memoir ‘Autobiography of a Supertramp’ tells of this time.

He was a successful writer living in London when he took the train to Carmarthen and walked across South Wales on the journey he would describe in ‘Poet’s Pilgrimage’. We join him as he walks across Monmouthshire.

As well as being a great walker, Davies is a great drinker. He famously declared: “Teetotallers lack the sympathy and generosity of men that drink.” He would end his walks with a pause at a convenient pub. When, having walked eight miles, he arrives at Tredegar, he rewards himself with a visit to the pub.

Many of the places he stops at we might recognise almost a hundred years later.

Walking towards Abergavenny from the heads of the Valleys, he stops at the Forge Hammer and has to edge his way past a pig which is sleeping in the doorway. There, he was told he could get clean lodgings at "a place called the Hen and Chickens".

He stopped at a pub in Pontywain for four reasons. "Firstly, I was thirsty; secondly, I was tired; thirdly, it was called the Philanthropic Inn, and it was the first time that I had ever known an inn to be called by that name." Later, when walking through Malpas and Llantarnam on his way to Pontypool, he stops at the Three Blackbirds. He has a glass of beer which he praised as being "a good brew, mild and yet satisfying, frothy without gas."

As a poet, he has a fine reporter’s eye and his descriptions of Gwent are evocative. In Ebbw Vale he sat in the hills overlooking the town with the ironworks making "a noise like great waves beating against rocks" making him think he was near the sea.

The poet who wanted to “stand beneath the boughs/And stare as long as sheep or cows” delights in the flowers he sees in the hedgerows.

He tells of his pleasure while walking in the countryside and seeing "my old favourites, there in abundance: daisies and buttercups, primroses, violets, etc"

Passing through Mitchel Troy, he has a moment when he does stand and stare. He sat down at the roadside to take a few moments rest and had his "attention drawn to a flower, inside which a bumble bee was lying at rest." Davies touched him lightly on the back and saw how "he shook his fat little body and took a tighter hold on the bosom of his flower."

Not surprisingly, he baulks at signs of modernity spoiling his idyll. He rails against the motor-cyclists who race along the Wye Valley, ruining the tranquility of Tintern. As someone who had spent much of his life walking country roads, the emergence of the motor cycle and the car must have unsettled him greatly. No longer could he safely wander with only birdsong as accompaniment.

He walked then from Chepstow via Caerwent to Newport, wondering who he might see who he knew. As he crossed Newport Bridge, he was accosted by someone he had not seen since he was a boy, but who he recognised immediately. They went to the Old Green Hotel for a drink and Davies is delighted when his friends' wife calls him an 'author', the first time he says that this has happened.

He is full of praise for his hometown, declaring the town to be "on the whole very beautiful. When a man is on Stow Hill, he begins to see at once that the town has a remarkable beauty of position."

"From the hill" he states, "the Bristol Channel is to be seen and the islands in it and homeward-bound ships." But for Davies, what he called 'Alteryn' or now 'Allt-yr-Yn' is the fairest part of the town. He stands on a hillside road and gazes at the "wonderful green valley" and he admits being "deeply affected by the sight".

"The place seemed to smile at me" he wrote, yet he felt "tantalized and tormented" by the thought that as he grew old this place would always remain the same. Of course, he could not know that some of where he gazed upon would soon be built over with Tarmac and brick and would be changed completely.

Walking through Panteg a group of children playing on the road join him. They follow him in respectful silence and Davies admits to being afraid adults watching might think he had charmed them and was leading them Pied Piper-like. In stark contrast to today, in Davies' account children are often playing on roads unsupervised. They mostly are curious about this stranger, and many times Davies strikes up conversations with them as he walks - a situation that is now almost unthinkable.

There are statues and plaques in Newport to remember him but perhaps the best way to honour him, is when you are out and about this Easter, think of Davies and take delight in nature bursting forth with his "old favourites – the daisies and the buttercups” and when you've done that, find a taproom and raise a glass in his honour.

Or maybe recite his famous lines:

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 or 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.