Gift box with gathered untied raspberry ribbon

Original artwork, not a still

Kavanagh

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving. Give what you have. To someone it may be better than you dare to think.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker says nobody is so poor that they have nothing worth giving, and urges giving what one has. Something modest may mean far more to the receiver than the giver would dare to imagine, so a gift's value is judged by its recipient.

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