Pluck not the wayside flower; It is the traveler's dower.

In two compact lines, Allingham frames a small ethical appeal: leave the wildflower where it grows. The “wayside flower” is a modest, common beauty, but it belongs to no single passerby; it is a shared gift (“dower”) for whoever comes after. The couplet thus treats restraint as a form of generosity, suggesting that enjoyment need not require possession. Read more broadly, it anticipates modern conservationist sentiment: the impulse to pluck, collect, or consume can diminish a landscape’s quiet pleasures for others, while leaving things intact preserves a common inheritance of beauty and solace for travelers.