Not less sad are his National Songs. In 'Sephirah' he tells us that the Jew's year is but a succession of periods for weeping. Most of his songs of that class deal with the tragical conflict between religious duties and actualities. Such is 'The First Bath of Ablution,' which is one of the prettiest Jewish ballads. The 'Measuring of the Graves,' which relates the superstition of the Jews who study by candles with the wicks of which graves have been measured, is especially interesting, on account of the excellent use of the language of the Tchines made in it. The unanswered question of the boy in the 'Moon Prayer' is one of many that the poet likes to propound. Perhaps the best poem under the same heading is 'On the Bosom of the Ocean,' which is remarkable not only as a sad portrayal of the misfortunes of the Jew who is driven out of Russia and is sent back from America because he has not the requisite amount of money which would entitle him to stay here, but also on account of the wonderful description of a storm at sea. The same sad strain passes through the poems classed as miscellaneous. Now it is the nightingale that chooses the cemetery in which to sing his sweetest songs ('The Cemetery Nightingale'). Or the flowers in autumn do not call forth regrets, for they have not been smiling on the poor laborer in his suffering ('To the Flowers in Autumn'). Or again, the poet compares himself with the bird who sings in the wilderness where 'the dead remain dead, and the silent remain silent' ('In the Wilderness').
The gloom that lies over so many of Rosenfeld's poems is the result of his own sad experiences in the sweat-shop and during his struggle for existence; but this gloom is only the accident of his themes. Behind it lies the inexhaustible field of the poet's genius which adorns and beautifies every subject on which he chooses to write. The most remarkable characteristic of his genius is to weld into one the dramatic action and the lyrical qualities of his verse, as has probably never been attempted before. Whether he writes of the sweat-shop, or of the storm on the ocean, or of the Jewish soldier who rises nightly from his grave, we in every instance get a drama and yet a lyric, not as separate developments, but inextricably combined into one whole. Thus, for example, 'In the Sweat-shop' is a lyrical poem, if Hood's 'Song of the Shirt' is one, but in so far as the poet, or operative, is turned into a machine and is subjected to the exterior forces which determine his moods and his destiny, we have the evolution of a tragedy before us. Similarly, the exact parallel of the storm on the ocean with the storm in the hearts of the two Jews in the steerage is no less of a dramatic nature than an utterance of subjective feelings.