the supertramp - W.H.Davies - poetryClick image for Davies home

The Legacy


She died when I was young,
And I myself am old now;
And still her small, few shillings come,
Like shoots from a severed bough.
Though they have dwindled, year by year,
Can I despise these tiny gains-
Worth little more than children’s weeds
Picked in the woods and kissed in lanes?
Not while I think her spirit lives
And, close beside me, understands
The grateful love-so long delayed-
In the kiss on her ghostly hands.