Foliage

W. H. Davies’s mind is full of thunderstorms: they brood for hours, then rain words that turn drooping thoughts into dancing flowers and silent birds into song.

In this early-twentieth-century collection, a May morning shines with birdsong even as death waits without warning; beneath an old oak, the sufferings of London’s hungry and homeless come sharply into view. Davies’s poems move from a laughing rose and a generous, unruly Christmas feast to a mother pleading with Hunger for her baby’s sake. Their speaker looks for joy in drink and riches, then finds it among clouds, birds, and flowers—without paying a penny. What storms, sorrows, and sudden gladness will these poems bring into bloom?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.