



Produced by S Goodman, David Starner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team











  SONGS OF LABOR
  AND OTHER POEMS BY
  MORRIS ROSENFELD

  _Translated from the Yiddish by
  Rose Pastor Stokes and Helena Frank_




  Contents


  In the Factory
  My Boy
  The Nightingale to the Workman
  What is the World?
  Despair
  Whither?
  From Dawn to Dawn
  The Candle Seller
  The Pale Operator
  The Beggar Family
  A Millionaire
  September Melodies
  Depression
  The Canary
  Want and I
  The Phantom Vessel
  To my Misery
  O Long the Way
  To the Fortune Seeker
  My Youth
  In the Wilderness
  I've Often Laughed
  Again I Sing my Songs
  Liberty
  A Tree in the Ghetto
  The Cemetery Nightingale
  The Creation of Man
  Journalism
  Pen and Shears
  For Hire
  A Fellow Slave
  The Jewish May
  The Feast of Lights
  Chanukah Thoughts
  Sfere
  Measuring the Graves
  The First Bath of Ablution
  Atonement Evening Prayer
  Exit Holiday




  SONGS OF LABOR AND OTHER POEMS





  In the Factory


  Oh, here in the shop the machines roar so wildly,
  That oft, unaware that I am, or have been,
  I sink and am lost in the terrible tumult;
  And void is my soul... I am but a machine.
  I work and I work and I work, never ceasing;
  Create and create things from morning till e'en;
  For what?--and for whom--Oh, I know not! Oh, ask not!
  Who ever has heard of a conscious machine?

  No, here is no feeling, no thought and no reason;
  This life-crushing labor has ever supprest
  The noblest and finest, the truest and richest,
  The deepest, the highest and humanly best.
  The seconds, the minutes, they pass out forever,
  They vanish, swift fleeting like straws in a gale.
  I drive the wheel madly as tho' to o'ertake them,--
  Give chase without wisdom, or wit, or avail.

  The clock in the workshop,--it rests not a moment;
  It points on, and ticks on: Eternity--Time;
  And once someone told me the clock had a meaning,--
  Its pointing and ticking had reason and rhyme.
  And this too he told me,--or had I been dreaming,--
  The clock wakened life in one, forces unseen,
  And something besides;... I forget what; Oh, ask not!
  I know not, I know not, I am a machine.

  At times, when I listen, I hear the clock plainly;--
  The reason of old--the old meaning--is gone!
  The maddening pendulum urges me forward
  To labor and labor and still labor on.
  The tick of the clock is the Boss in his anger!
  The face of the clock has the eyes of a foe;
  The clock--Oh, I shudder--dost hear how it drives me?
  It calls me "Machine!" and it cries to me "Sew!"

  At noon, when about me the wild tumult ceases,
  And gone is the master, and I sit apart,
  And dawn in my brain is beginning to glimmer,
  The wound comes agape at the core of my heart;
  And tears, bitter tears flow; ay, tears that are scalding;
  They moisten my dinner--my dry crust of bread;
  They choke me,--I cannot eat;--no, no, I cannot!
  Oh, horrible toil I born of Need and of Dread.

  The sweatshop at mid-day--I'll draw you the picture:
  A battlefield bloody; the conflict at rest;
  Around and about me the corpses are lying;
  The blood cries aloud from the earth's gory breast.
  A moment... and hark! The loud signal is sounded,
  The dead rise again and renewed is the fight...
  They struggle, these corpses; for strangers, for strangers!
  They struggle, they fall, and they sink into night.

  I gaze on the battle in bitterest anger,
  And pain, hellish pain wakes the rebel in me!
  The