The
Arthurian knight, the Renaissance courtier, the scholar and the wit must
admit the twentieth-century artisan to their circle. Piers the ploughman
must once more become the hero of song, and Saul Kane, the poacher, must
find a place, alongside of Tiresias and Merlin, among the seers and
mystics. Let democracy look to William Morris, poet, artist and social
democrat, for inspiration and guidance, and take to heart the message of
prophecy which he has left us: "If art, which is now sick, is to live
and not die, it must in the future be of the people, for the people,
by the people."
In the creation of this poetry "of the people, by the people" dialect may
well be called upon to play a part. Dialect is of the people, though in a
varying degree in the different parts of the wide areas of the globe where
the English language is spoken; it possesses, moreover, qualities, and is
fraught with associations, which are of the utmost value to the poet and
to which the standard speech can lay no claim. It may be that for some of
the more elaborate kinds of poetry, such as the formal epic, dialect is
useless; let it be reserved, therefore, for those kinds which appeal most
directly to the hearts of the people.
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