“The time may not be far distant when England will again become what it was in Elizabethan days—a nest of singing birds.”

Hope that minor voices may swell a national chorus once more · Preface, Songs of the Ridings

• England
• Hope
• Poetry

“It is hardly necessary to state that Yorkshire has produced neither a Robert Burns, a William Barnes, nor even an Edwin Waugh.”

Honest about the absence of a single commanding dialect genius · Introduction, Yorkshire Dialect Poems

• Comparison
• Honesty
• Poets

“Piers the ploughman must once more become the hero of song, and Saul Kane, the poacher, must find a place, alongside of Tiresias and Merlin, among the seers and mystics.”

Labouring and outlaw figures belong in the same company as mythic seers · Preface, Songs of the Ridings

• Democracy
• Poetry
• Work