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]
[Sfēré]
[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 clock—now I hear it aright!—It is crying:
“An end to this bondage! An end there must be!”
It quickens my reason, each feeling within me;
It shows me how precious the moments that fly.
Oh, worthless my life if I longer am silent,
And lost to the world if in silence I die.
The man in me sleeping begins to awaken;
The thing that was slave into slumber has passed:
Now; up with the man in me! Up and be doing!
No misery more! Here is freedom at last!
When sudden: a whistle!—the Boss—an alarum!—
I sink in the slime of the stagnant routine;—
There’s tumult, they struggle, oh, lost is my ego;—
I know not, I care not, I am a machine!...
[My Boy]
I have a little boy at home,
A pretty little son;
I think sometimes the world is mine
In him, my only one.
But seldom, seldom do I see
My child in heaven’s light;
I find him always fast asleep...
I see him but at night.
Ere dawn my labor drives me forth;
’Tis night when I am free;
A stranger am I to my child;
And strange my child to me.
I come in darkness to my home,
With weariness and—pay;
My pallid wife, she waits to tell
The things he learned to say.
How plain and prettily he asked:
“Dear mamma, when’s ‘Tonight’?
O when will come my dear papa
And bring a penny bright?”
I hear her words—I hasten out—
This moment must it be!—
The father-love flames in my breast:
My child must look at me!
I stand beside the tiny cot,
And look, and list, and—ah!
A dream-thought moves the baby-lips:
“O, where is my papa!”
I kiss and kiss the shut blue eyes;
I kiss them not in vain.
They open,—O they see me then!
And straightway close again.
“Here’s your papa, my precious one;—
A penny for you!”—ah!
A dream still moves the baby-lips:
“O, where is my papa!”
And I—I think in bitterness
And disappointment sore;
“Some day you will awake, my child,
To find me nevermore.”
[The Nightingale to the Workman]
Fair summer is here, glad summer is here!
O hark! ’tis to you I am singing:
The sun is all gold in a heaven of blue,
The birds in the forest are trilling for you,
The flies ’mid the grasses are winging;
The little brook babbles—its secret is sweet.
The loveliest flowers would circle your feet,—
And you to your work ever clinging!...
Come forth! Nature loves you. Come forth! Do not fear!
Fair summer is here, glad summer is here,
Full measure of happiness bringing.
All creatures drink deep; and they pour wine anew
In the old cup of life, and they wonder at you.
Your portion is waiting since summer began;
Then take it, oh, take it, you laboring man!
’Tis summer today; ay, summer today!
The butterflies light on the flowers.
Delightfully glistens the silvery rain,
The mountains are covered with greenness again,
And perfumed and cool are the bowers.
The sheep frisk about in the flowery vale,
The shepherd and shepherdess pause in the dale,
And these are the holiest hours!...
Delay not, delay not, life passes away!
’Tis summer today, sweet summer today!
Come, throttle your wheel’s grinding power!...
Your worktime is bitter and endless in length;
And have you not foolishly lavished your strength?
O think not the world is with bitterness rife,
But drink of the wine from the goblet of life.
O, summer is here, sweet summer is here!
I cannot forever be trilling;
I flee on the morrow. Then, you, have a care!
The crow, from the perch I am leaving, the air
With ominous cries will be filling.
O, while I am singing to you from my tree
Of love, and of life, and of joy yet to be,
Arouse you!—O why so unwilling!...
The heavens remain not so blue and so clear;—
Now summer is here! Come, summer is here!
Reach out for the joys that are thrilling!
For like you who fade at your wheel, day by day,
Soon all things will fade and be carried away.
Our lives are but moments; and sometimes the cost
Of a moment o’erlooked is eternity lost.
[What is the World?]
Well, say you the world is a chamber of sleep,
And life but a sleeping and dreaming?
Then I too would dream: and would joyously reap
The blooms of harmonious seeming;
The dream-flow’rs of hope and of freedom, perchance,
The rich are so merrily reaping;—
In Love’s eyes I’d fancy the joy of romance;
No more would I dream Love is weeping.
Or say you the world is a banquet, a ball,
Where everyone goes who is able?
I too wish to sit like a lord in the hall
With savory share at the table.
I too can enjoy what is wholesome and good,
A morsel both dainty and healthy;
I have in my body the same sort of blood
That flows in the veins of the wealthy.
A garden you say is the world, where abound
The sweetest and loveliest roses?
Then would I, no leave asking, saunter around
And gather me handfuls of posies.
Of thorns I am sure I would make me no wreath;
(Of flowers I am very much fonder).
And with my beloved the bowers beneath
I’d wander, and wander, and wander.
But ah! if the world is a battlefield wild,
Where struggle the weak with the stronger,
Then heed I no storm and no wife and no child!—
I stand in abeyance no longer;—
Rush into the fire of the battle nor yield,
And fight for my perishing brother;
Well, if I am struck—I can die on the field;
Die gladly as well as another....
[Despair]
No rest—not one day in the seven for me?
Not one, from the maddening yoke to be free?
Not one to escape from the boss on the prowl,
His sinister glance and his furious growl,
The cry of the foreman, the smell of the shop,—
To feel for one moment the manacles drop?
—’Tis rest then you want, and you fain would forget?
To rest and oblivion they’ll carry you yet.
The flow’rs and the trees will have withered ere long,
The last bird already is ending his song;
And soon will be leafless and shadeless the bow’rs...
I long, oh I long for the perfume of flow’rs!
To feel for a moment ere stripped are the trees,
In meadow lands open, the breath of the breeze.
—You long for the meadow lands breezy and fair?
O, soon enough others will carry you there.
The rivulet sparkles with heavenly light,
The wavelets they glisten, with diamonds bedight.
Oh, but for a moment to leap in the stream,
And play in the waters that ripple and gleam!
My body is weakened with terrible toil.—
The bath would refresh me, renew me the while.
—You dream of a bath in the shimmering stream?
’Twill come—when forever is ended your dream.
The sweatshop is smoky and gloomy and mean—
I strive—oh, how vainly I strive to be clean!
All day I am covered with grime and with dirt.
You’d laugh,—but I long for a spotless white shirt!
For life that is noble, ’tis needful, I ween,
To work as a man should; and still be as clean.
—So now ’tis your wish all in white to be dressed?
In white they will robe you, and lay you to rest.
The woods they are cool, and the woods they are free;—
To dream and to wander, how sweet it would be!
The birds their eternal glad holiday keep;
With song that enchants you and lulls you to sleep.
’Tis hot here,—and close! and the din will not cease.
I long for the forest, its coolth and its peace.
—Ay, cool you will soon be; and not only cool,
But cold as no forest can make you, O Fool!
I long for a friend who will comfort and cheer,
And fill me with courage when sorrow is near;
A comrade, of treasures the rarest and best,
Who gives to existence its crown and its crest;
And I am an orphan—and I am alone;
No friend or companion to call me his own.
—Companions a-plenty—they’re numberless too;
They’re swarming already and waiting for you.