Himself in contact with the lower strata of society and yet in spirit allied to the highest; at once the subject of religious and race persecutions and of industrial oppression; tossed about among the opposition parties or Anarchists, Socialists, Populists, without allying himself with any; by education and associations a Jew, and yet not subscribing strictly to the tenets of the Mosaic Law,--he voices the ominous foreboding of the tidal wave which threatens to submerge our civilization, he utters the cry of anguish and despair that rises in different quarters and condemns the present order of things. Rosenfeld does not scoff, or scorn, or hate. He is one with the oppressor and the oppressed; if he sings more of the latter, it is only because he sees more of that side of life. He is a sensitive plate that reproduces the pictures that arise before his mental vision, and the gloom of his poems is rather that which he sees than that which he feels; for he has also written songs of spring and happiness in the few intervals when the sky has looked down unclouded on the Ghetto in which he has lived so long. We shall confine ourselves to the small volume of his poetry, 'The Songs from the Ghetto,' even though it contains but one-tenth of all the verses that he has written. Who can read his 'Songs of Labor' without shedding tears? We enter with the poet, who is the tailor himself, the murky sweat-shop where the monotonous click of the sewing-machine, which kills thought and feeling, mysteriously whispers in your ear:-- "Ich arbeit', un' arbeit', un' arbeit' ohn' Cheschben. Es schafft sich, un' schafft sich, un' schafft sich ohn' Zāhl,"