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. The poetry of the people includes
the ballad and the verse tale, lyric in all its forms, and some kinds of
satire; and for all these dialect is a fitting instrument. It possesses
in the highest degree directness of utterance and racy vigour. How much
of their force would the "Biglow Papers" of J. R. Lowell lose if they were
transcribed from the Yankee dialect into standard English!

But the highest quality of dialect speech, and that which renders it
pre-eminently fitted for poetic use, is its intimate association with all
that lies nearest to the heart of the working man. It is the language of
his hearth and home; many of the most cherished memories of his life are
bound up with it; it is for him the language of freedom, whereas standard
English is that of constraint. In other words, dialect is the working
man's poetic diction--a poetic diction as full of savour as that of the
eighteenth-century poets was flat and insipid.