Farm life -- United States; Girls -- United States
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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