Birdsong, Butterflies, and June Gold: Celebrating William Henry Davies

July 3, 2020

Today marks the birthday of William Henry Davies, the wandering English poet whose words are steeped in birdsong, sunshine, and the hum of a simple life.

Born in 1871, Davies was the rare soul who could find poetry in a woodpecker’s rhythm or the tremor of a butterfly’s wing.

His life was as unconventional as his lines—he spent years as a drifter and vagabond before finding literary recognition, aided by none other than George Bernard Shaw, who admired his sincerity and penned the preface to his autobiography.

What makes Davies so beloved by gardeners and nature-lovers alike is the freshness of his observation. He saw beauty in humble things—in what others might overlook—and rendered it with tenderness and wit.

In this first poem, “April’s Charms,” we hear nature keeping time, a symphony of ordinary miracles orchestrated by birds and trees:

When I can hear the small woodpeckers ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing ;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long?
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song.
— William Henry Davies, English poet, April’s Charms

He makes you pause and listen—what might simply be background noise for most becomes the rhythm of life itself. That innocent line about the cuckoo—“the simple bird that thinks two notes a song”—captures the patient humor of someone who has learned to delight in enough.

Next come the butterflies—fragile, trembling, and full of wonder.

In “Newcomers,” Davies writes with sympathy for creatures who seem to share his own tender bewilderment at being alive:

And here are butterflies: poor things
Amazed with new-created wings;
They in the air-waves roll distressed
Like ships at sea; and when they rest
They cannot help but open and close
Their wings, like babies with their toes.
— William Henry Davies, English poet, Newcomers

There is such affection here—and so much humor tucked beneath it.

Who else would think to compare a butterfly’s trembling wings to a baby’s small discovery of its toes?

His world was intimate and alive, each detail a living metaphor for wonder itself.

Finally, in “All in June,” Davies captures the transition from hardship to abundance, from winter’s chill to summer’s lavish bloom.

The poem feels like a gardener’s own diary come to life:

A week ago I had a fire
To warm my feet, my hands, and face;
Cold winds, that never make a friend,
Crept in and out of every place.
Today the fields are rich in grass,
And buttercups in thousands grow;
I'll show the world where I have been--
With gold-dust seen on either shoe.
Till to my garden back I come,
Where bumble-bees for hours and hours
Sit on their soft, fat, velvet bums,
To wriggle out of hollow flowers.
— William Henry Davies, English poet, All in June

With gentle humor and delight, he turns the smallest moments—muddy shoes, fat bumblebees, the smell of summer flowers—into the purest form of joy.

It is the world as seen by someone who knows the value of warmth, of light, of belonging.

Davies reminds us that the garden’s beauty isn’t merely in its design or bloom, but in its living spirit—the birds, the bees, the brief new butterflies.

His poetry whispers to every gardener: pause, look again, and love what is before you.

For in that noticing lies everything.