They have shod Thy feet with spikes, and jointed Thy dead knees with iron,
And pushed Thee, hiding behind, to trample the poor dumb faces.'
"'Oppression has its leagues and its triumphs, but
'"Never, while steel is cheap and sharp, shall thy kinglings sleep without dreaming.'"
'From The Buffalo Union.
"The strength, tenderness, and exceeding power and aptness of expression conspicuous in a former volume—('Songs, Legends, and Ballads,')—are all here, intensified. The poet goes beyond the limits of any one land or nationhood. He sings here for all time and for every nation. His inspiration is Humanity, wherever it agonizes under tyrannical bonds or struggles to break them. 'From the Earth a Cry,' is a very epitome of the history of the manifold uprisings, all the world over, of the weak against the strong during the decade just ended—the voice of the oppressed clamoring to Heaven for vengeance—an arraignment of the
"'Landlords and Lawlords and Tradelords'
before the bar of justice, and in face of the terrible growth of
"' Communists, Socialists, Nihilists, Rent-rebels, Strikers'—
from the seed themselves have sown.
"We wish we could speak in detail of some of the other poems, with their rugged but splendid versification, in which the poet has taken
"'No heed of the words, nor . . .
the style of the story,
but
"'Let it burst out from the heart, like a spring from the womb of the mountain;'
or of that majestic opening poem, 'The Statues in the Block,' through which this true note rings:—
"'When God gives to us the clearest sight.
He does not touch our eyes with Love, but Sorrow.'
