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Leisure is a poem by Welsh poet William Henry Davies, appearing originally in his Songs Of Joy and Others, published in 1911 by A. C. Fifield.

The poem is well known and has appeared in the following anthologies:

• Anglo-Welsh Poetry, published by Poetry Wales Press in 1984
• Book of a Thousand Poems, published by Peter Bedrick Books in 1983
• Common Ground, published by Carcanet in 1989
• Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, published by OUP in 1971
• A Poem a Day, published by Steer Forth in 1996

Davies is generally best known for the opening two lines of the poem:

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

References