but as we listen to his verse tales we can never forget that it is the
Rev. George Crabbe who is instructing us, or that his pedestal is the
topmost story of his three-decker pulpit at Aldborough. Wordsworth's
sympathy with the lives of the Cumberland peasantry is profound, and the
time is surely not distant when such a poem as 'Michael' will win a place
in the hearts of working men; but it is to be feared that in his own
generation "Mr Wudsworth" served rather--as a warning than an
encouragement to his peasant neighbours. "Many's the time," an old
Cumberland innkeeper told Canon Rawnsley, "I've seed him a-takin' his
family out in a string, and niver geein' the deariest bit of notice to
'em; standin' by hissel' an' stoppin' behind a-gapin', wi' his jaws
workin' the whoal time; but niver no crackin' wi' 'em, nor no pleasure in
'em--a desolate-minded man, ye kna... It was potry as did it."(2)

Our English non-dramatic poetry from the Renaissance onwards is second to
none in richness of thought and beauty of diction, but it lacks the
highest quality of all--universality of interest and appeal. Our poets
have turned a cold shoulder to the activities and aims of the working man,
and the working man has, in consequence, turned a cold shoulder to the
great English classic poets. The loss on either side has been great,
though it is only now beginning to be realised. "A literature which
leaves large areas of the national activity and aspiration unexpressed is
in danger of becoming narrow, esoteric, unhealthy. Areas of activity and
aspiration unlit by the cleansing sun of art, untended by the loving
consideration of the poet, will be dungeons for the national spirit,
mildewed cellars in which rats fight, misers hoard their gold, and Guy
Fawkes lays his train to blow the superstructure sky-high."(3)

There was a time when poetry meant much more to the working men of
England. In the later Middle Ages, above all in that fifteenth century