"Well, then, as you're among friends, Billy, I repeat, what about yourself?"
"I have my profession," Bill answered quietly. "I am a doctor—and I love it. It is, perhaps, my vocation—to heal and to mend, and to help. And equally, perhaps, poetry is my avocation."
"Dictionary definition of avocation is 'diversion,'" said Wright, triumphantly.
"And the definition of diversion is 'recreation'!" I put in.
"Exactly," said Bill, "re-creation. To create anew—to refresh. That is, perhaps, the mission of poetry, and applies to the poet as well as to his audience. Poetry is, for me, the language of dreams: the ceaseless search for beauty: something common to all men. For the peasant dreams as well as the inventor: the man of science, as well as the financier and the college professor who thinks of education as something bigger than is contained between the covers of a text-book. And from the soil, the shop, the laboratory, the office and the school-room great songs have been sung,—not all of them in words!"
"The financier dreams?" said Wright, incredulously. "Not much!"
"If he didn't, he wouldn't be where he is," answered Bill. "If the engineer didn't dream, the bridges would not be swung over the boiling rivers of strange countries, or the railroad tracks laid through the virgin jungle and the ageless desert—"
I had a curious sensation, listening to that even, low voice. It was as if, for the first time, I had heard Richard Warren speak.
"I guess you're right," said the other man, after a moment of silence.
"Of course I am," answered Bill. "And so, the poets dream dreams too, and try to interpret other men's dreams: those which are built in brick and stone: materialized into steel: founded in a huge office building. The grim reality of war stands for dreams sometimes. Many inarticulate poets have gone singing to the bayonet thrust. Once, a handful of people dreamed of Liberty; and the United States was their expression of that dream."