The tongues of toil, and other poems

A sequence of poems that confront industrial capitalism and its human cost, combining denunciations of exploitation with celebratory paeans to labor. Several pieces dramatize the lives of workers and children in factories, portray the hangman and other agents of state violence, and imagine collective awakening and solidarity across nations. Others take moral aim at employers, censorship, and social hypocrisy while affirming labor's creative and cosmic role in shaping humanity. Tone ranges from excoriating and elegiac to rousing and didactic, and the collection moves between vivid scenes of suffering and direct addresses to power, urging justice and social reform.