Life & Wisdom Quote by William Allingham

A pardon offered in advance is never just kindness; it is choreography. Allingham stages himself at the edge of judgment, speaking as if from the threshold of death or public reckoning, and the line’s power comes from that quiet pressure: a man asking to be remembered cleanly while admitting, with a poet’s economy, that he isn’t. “If any foes of mine are there” feigns uncertainty, but it’s a razor-edged way of acknowledging conflict without naming names. He keeps his hands formally open: no grievance aired, no score settled, no messy particulars that might complicate the pose.

The charm is in the reciprocity. He pardons “every one,” then immediately asks for the same in return. Mercy becomes a social contract, not a purely spiritual act. That’s the subtext: forgiveness is also reputation management, a last bid to control the story after you’re gone. The phrase “man and womankind” widens the audience beyond personal enemies to an imagined public - readers, neighbors, posterity - as if the real foe is the verdict of others.

Contextually, Allingham sits in a 19th-century moral climate where a “good death” and a tidy conscience mattered, and where poets routinely performed humility as a form of authority. The line works because it’s both generous and strategic: he takes the higher ground while conceding he may need it. It’s the softest possible way to say, I know I’ve hurt people - please don’t reduce me to that.