Conceived amid the heat and discomfort of the sweating-shops, born in poverty and squalid surroundings, growing up with hunger and despair and failure, and at last an honored guest at the table of ease and culture--such is the history of the 'Songs from the Ghetto' by Morris Rosenfeld. Mr. Rosenfeld was born of poor parents in Poland in 1862. Wandering in search of work in England and Holland, he at length found a scanty means of support as a tailor in the sweating-shops of New York. Of miserable origin, poorly educated, struggling for the barest necessities of life, there was yet in him a poet's soul, struggling for expression.
The poems of Mr. Rosenfeld, written in the Judeo-German dialect, which he has brought to great literary perfection, have been collected, translated into English prose and edited by Professor Leo Wiener, instructor in Slavic languages at Harvard.
The songs in this little volume are very beautiful, but whether they sing of labour or nature, of the shop or the country, there is in every one a strain of sadness, the melody of each is broken with tears. For the beauty of which the poet sings, the birds and the flowers, are only dreams from which he wakes to the misery in his life. It is not the bitter sadness of hate and rebellion, but the sadness of the Jewish race, resigned and oppressed, expecting no happiness among an alien people, but looking for a life of peace in a new Jerusalem.
"Again your lime will be fragrant, and your orange will gleam," he comforts the wanderer, "again God will awaken and bring you thither. You will sing Shepherd songs as you will herd your sheep; you will live again, live eternally, without end. After your terrible wanderings you will again breathe freely; there will again beat a hero's heart under the silent mountain Moriah."
The songs are not all of labour, or of the sorrows of the Jews. In lighter vein is 'The Nightingale to the Labourer,' 'The Creation of Man'--which contains the pretty idea that the poet alone was given wings, and an angel stood always "ready day and night to attach the wings to him whenever his holy song will rise."
The last song in the little volume, called 'In the Wilderness,' is typical of the poet's spirit; but not, we believe, of his place in the world. For the world is always ready to listen to a song that carries with it the impress of truth and beauty.
"In a distant wilderness a bird stands alone and looks about him, sadly, and sings a beautiful song.
"His heavenly-sweet voice flows like the purest gold, and wakens the cold stones and the prairie wide and deserted.
"He wakens the dead rocks and the silent mountains round about,--but the dead remain dead, and the silent remain silent.
"For whom, sweet singer, do your clear tones resound? Who hears you, and who feels you? And whose concern are you?