_From an etching by Herman Struck_
]
His poems are cries of pain out of his own life interpreted in
terms of the life of his class. He is always lyric, he is always
personal, but he is never egotistical. The story runs that at his
machine in the midday hour he would write a lyric of the workshop
instead of eating his meager lunch. The song to the working-girl
prostitute is one of these workshop poems which like a flash
reveal working and living conditions such as in less revealing
form have been put before us by investigators.
The twelve-hour day may be said to be the subject of My Boy. The
tailor’s baby was always asleep when his father got home from
work: