“Well—but—Mr. Mackaye, I know nothing about these poor creatures.”
“Then ye ought. What do ye ken anent the Pacific? [Alton Locke has been writing poems about the South Sea Islands.] Which is maist to your business?—thae bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o’ the other side o’ the warld, or these—these thousands o’ bare-backed hizzies that play the harlot o’ your ain side—made out o’ your ain flesh and blude? You a poet! True poetry, like true charity, my laddie, begins at hame. If ye’ll be a poet at a’, ye maun be a cockney poet; and while the cockneys be what they be, ye maun write, like Jeremiah of old, o’ lamentation and mourning and woe, for the sins o’ your people. Gin you want to learn the spirit o’ a people’s poet, down wi’ your Bible and read thae auld Hebrew prophets; gin ye wad learn the style, read your Burns frae morning till night; and gin ye’d learn the matter, just gang after your nose, and keep your eyes open, and ye’ll no miss it.”
“But all this is so—so unpoetical.”
“Hech! Is there no the heeven above them there, and the hell beneath them? and God frowning, and the deevil grinning? No poetry there! Is no the verra idea of the classic tragedy defined to be, man conquered by circumstance? Canna ye see it there? And the verra idea of the modern tragedy, man conquering circumstance?—and I’ll show you that, too—in mony a garret where no eye but the gude God’s enters, to see the patience, and the fortitude, and the self-sacrifice, and the luve stronger than death, that’s shining in thae dark places o’ the earth. Come wi’ me, and see.”
The Prophetic Book “Milton”
By William Blake
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountain green?
And was the holy Lamb of God