The speaker sets two worlds side by side. He cannot claim to know a duke whose gilded gate a poor old man died outside, or a lady who bathes in milk while infants go hungry; these figures are remote, almost grotesque in their indifference. What he does know, personally and painfully, is the opposite side: a thin mother clutching a tiny baby that looks skinned like a rabbit when undressed, and a homeless child left crying before a locked door. The poem’s irony lies in that word “know”: the rich are only names, but the poor are real to him. The mood is sorrowful and quietly furious, moving from cold luxury to intimate suffering. Davies voices social anger not by preaching, but by showing which lives he can see clearly.
Who I Know — Summary
I do not know his grace the Duke, Outside whose gilded gate there died Of want a feeble, poor old man, With but his shadow at his side. I do not know his Lady fair, Who in a bath of milk doth lie; More milk than could feed fifty babes, That for the want of it must die. But well I know the mother poor, Three pounds of flesh wrapped in her shawl: A puny babe that, stripped at home, Looks like a rabbit skinned, so small. And well I know the homeless waif, Fed by the poorest of the poor; Since I have seen that child alone, Crying against a bolted door.