“There’s a serf whose chains are of paper; there’s a king with a parchment crown, There are robber knights and brigands in factory, field and town; But the vassal pays his tribute to a lord of wage rent; And the baron’s toll is Shylock’s, with a flesh and blood per cent. “The seamstress bends to her labor all night in a narrow room, The child, defrauded of childhood, tiptoes all day at the loom, The soul must starve, for the body can barely on husks be fed; And the loaded dice of a gambler settle the price of bread. “Ye have shorn and bound the Samson, and robbed him of learning’s light; But his sluggish brain is moving, his sinews have all their might, Look well to your gates of Gaza, your privilege, pride and caste! The Giant is blind and thinking, and his locks are growing fast.” “Netchaieff” and “For the People” are poems with a meaning. Their author is a thinker, a keen student of the social problems that convulse our every-day life. He walks the city’s streets, and sees sights and hears ominous murmuring. He uses the poet’s right to translate these scenes and sights into his own impassioned verse. This done, his duty done. The Creator must give brains to the reader. If that has been done, the poet’s lines will fall fresh and thought-provoking on his ears. It will take him from Mittens, Marjorie’s Kisses, April Maids and the school of fantastic littleness, to man’s inhumanity to man, the burning wrong of our day. An Adirondack climb, but then the point of view repays the exertion. It is generally written that the author of Songs and Satires is a comic poet. A half-way truth is expressed. If by comic is meant humor, yes; all poets who are worth looking into have in a greater or less degree that precious gift. It is a distinct gain if the author is an artist and knows how to use it, dangerous to the commonplace, who put it on with a white-wash brush. It is a nice line that divides humor from buffoonery. Our author is a humorist of that school whose genius has been used to alleviate human suffering. Its shafts are not forged by the hammer of spleen on the anvil of malice, but the workmanship of love mourning for misery. His spirit is akin to Hood’s. His touch is light, but his poniard is a Damascene blade well pointed. Cant has no foil to set it off. “A Concord Love Song” is a charming bit of satire. I can well remember the effect it had on a teacher of mine, a proud sage of that school of word-twisting and transcendental gush. He sniffed and pawed viciously, a sure sign that the poet’s dart was safely lodged in the bull’s eye. Those who have, as a sleep seducer, read some of the Concord fraternity’s vapid musings on the pensive Here and the doubtful Yonder, will deliciously relish such lines as these: