The Feast Of Lights

Little candles glistening,
Telling those are listening
Legends manifold,
Many a little story,
Tales of blood and glory
Of the days of old.

As I watch you flicker,
As I list you bicker,
Speak the ancient dreams:
--You have battled, Jew, one time,
You have conquer'd too, one time.
(God, how strange it seems!)

In your midst was order once,
And within your border once
Strangers took no part.
Jew, you had a land one time,
And an armed hand, one time.
(How it moves the heart!)

Glisten, candles, glisten!
As I stand and listen
All the grief in me,
All the woe is stirred again,
And the question heard again:
What the end shall be?

Morris Rosenfeld

Morris Rosenfeld, born on December 28, 1862, and deceased on June 22, 1923, was a Yiddish poet known for his poignant and evocative poems depicting the struggles and hardships of Jewish immigrants in New York City's sweatshops in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work often highlighted themes of poverty, labor rights, and the immigrant experience. Rosenfeld's poetry remains significant for its historical and cultural commentary, capturing the essence of the Jewish immigrant experience in America.

Morris Rosenfeld

The Jewish May

Morris Rosenfeld, Simple Poetry

What is the World?

Morris Rosenfeld, Simple Poetry

The Canary

Morris Rosenfeld, Simple Poetry

Despair

Morris Rosenfeld, Simple Poetry

English

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The Candle Seller

In Hester Street, hard by a telegraph post,
There sits a poor woman as wan as a ghost.
Her pale face is shrunk, like the face of the dead,
And yet you can tell that her cheeks once were red.
But love, ease and friendship and glory, I ween,
May hardly the cause of their fading have been.
Poor soul, she has wept so, she scarcely can see.
A skeleton infant she holds on her knee.
It tugs at her breast, and it whimpers and sleeps,
But soon at her cry it awakens and weeps--
"Two cents, my good woman, three candles will buy,
As bright as their flame be my star in the sky!"

Tho' few are her wares, and her basket is small,
She earns her own living by these, when at all.
She's there with her baby in wind and in rain,
In frost and in snow-fall, in weakness and pain.

Morris Rosenfeld

Sfere

I asked of my Muse, had she any objection
    To laughing with me,--not a word for reply!
You see, it is Sfere, our time for dejection,--
    And can a Jew laugh when the rule is to cry?

You laughed then, you say? 'tis a sound to affright one!
    In Jewish delight, what is worthy the name?
The laugh of a Jew! It is never a right one,
    For laughing and groaning with him are the same.

You thought there was zest in a Jewish existence?
    You deemd that the star of a Jew could be kind?
The Spring calls and beckons with gracious insistence,--
    Jew,--sit down in sackcloth and weep yourself blind!

The garden is green and the woodland rejoices:
    How cool are the breezes, with fragrance how blent!
But Spring calls not you with her thousand swe...

Morris Rosenfeld

The Jewish May

May has come from out the showers,
Sun and splendor in her train.
All the grasses and the flowers
Waken up to life again.
Once again the leaves do show,
And the meadow blossoms blow,
Once again through hills and dales
Rise the songs of nightingales.

Wheresoe'er on field or hillside
With her paint-brush Spring is seen,--
In the valley, by the rillside,
All the earth is decked with green.
Once again the sun beguiles
Moves the drowsy world to smiles.
See! the sun, with mother-kiss
Wakes her child to joy and bliss.

Now each human feeling presses
Flow'r like, upward to the sun,
Softly, through the heart's recesses,
Steal sweet fancies, one by one.
Golden dreams, their wings outshaking,
Now are making
Realms celestial,
...

Morris Rosenfeld

The Feast Of Lights.

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.


Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
From one heroic stock, one seed divine.


Five branches grown from Mat...

Emma Lazarus

Chanukah Thoughts

Not always as you see us now,
    Have we been used to weep and sigh,
We too have grasped the sword, I trow,
    And seen astonished foemen fly!

We too have rushed into the fray,
    For our Belief the battle braved,
And through the spears have fought our way,
    And high the flag of vict'ry waved.

But generations go and come,
    And suns arise and set in tears,
And we are weakened now and dumb,
    Foregone the might of ancient years.

In exile where the wicked reign,
Our courage and our pride expired,
But e'en today each throbbing vein
    With Asmonean blood is fired.

Tho' cruel hands with mighty flail
    Have threshed us, yet we have not blenched:
The sea of blood could naught prevail,
    That fire is burning, stil...

Morris Rosenfeld

A Tree in the Ghetto

There stands in th' leafless Ghetto
One spare-leaved, ancient tree;
Above the Ghetto noises
It moans eternally.

In wonderment it muses,
And murmurs with a sigh:
"Alas! how God-forsaken
And desolate am I!

"Alas, the stony alleys,
And noises loud and bold!
Where are ye, birds of summer?
Where are ye, woods of old?

"And where, ye breezes balmy
That wandered vagrant here?
And where, oh sweep of heavens
So deep and blue and clear?

"Where are ye, mighty giants?
Ye come not riding by
Upon your fiery horses,
A-whistling merrily.

"Of other days my dreaming,
Of other days, ah me!
When sturdy hero-races
Lived wild and glad and free!

"The old sun shone, how brightly!
The old lark sang, what s...

Morris Rosenfeld