It is because of this that the poetic writers of the present day and hour should find a sympathetic hearing in the country realm even when the turmoil and drive of the metropolis are deaf to their music. If our living poets may have the people of the countryside for their great and widespread audience they need ask no greater joy.
Mr. Vachel Lindsay, a wandering poet who has traveled almost all over this country preaching his Gospel of Beauty and Democracy, says that in almost every ranch-house "is born one flower-girl or boy, a stranger among the brothers and sisters," a "fairy changeling." The land, he says, is being "jeweled with talented children," from Maine to California. These children of to-day, though they may not be adapted to the strain of heavy labor, yet they will be infinitely patient with the violin, or chisel, or brush, or pen. Country people should be on the watch for those rare wonder children who will be the poets of the future. One of these may seem at the beginning like a simply unusual child. Afterward it may be seen that what was thought queer or different, may have been higher or supreme. We may not have been ourselves sufficiently attuned to the supreme in human accomplishment to recognize the elements in their beginning. Great genius is not "to madness near allied," but is the sanest and most normal thing in the whole realm of creation. The extension of human powers in the field of what we call "genius" is what makes the benefactor of the race in any field most successful and the reformer most influential.
Moreover, every child has the right to find forces in his world that will make his powers, however great or however small, grow to the full measure of which he is capable. If one has a little ability in the field of any one among the arts, he has a right to experience the joy and the benefit that as much training as he is capable of taking shall give to him. Therefore artistic training should be given to every child. And since poetry is the art that is most widely disseminated, the one most practical in its service and cheapest to get hold of in places far distant from picture galleries and concert halls, therefore there should be in all the homes in the open, a great deal of poetry, in order to satisfy the demand that is deeply imbedded in every human being for the satisfaction of the love of beauty.