ELIZABETH BARRETT
BROWNING
Source: http://www.todayinliterature.com/biography/elizabeth.barrett.browning.asp
THE CRY OF THE
CHILDREN
I
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my
brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers —
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west —
But the young, young children, O my brolhers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
II
Do you question the young children in
their sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so? —
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago —
The old tree is leafless in the forest —
The old year is ending in the frost —
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest —
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?
III
They look up with their pale and sunken
faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy —
"Your old earth", they say, "is very dreary";
"Our young feet", they say, "are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary —
Our grave-rest is very far to seek!
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold —
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old!
IV
"True", say the young
children, "it may happen
That we die before our time!
Little
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her —
Was no room for any work in the close clay:
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, ‘Get up, little Alice! it is day’.
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes —
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
It is good when it happens", say the children,
"That we die before our time!"
V
Alas, the wretched children! they are
seeking
Death in life; as best to have!
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city —
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do —
Pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty —
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!
But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine!
VI
"For oh", say the children,
"we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap —
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping —
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark, underground —
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
VII
"For, all day, the wheels are
droning, turning —
Their wind comes in our faces —
Till our hearts turn — our heads, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places —
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling —
Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall —
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling —
All are turning, all the day, and we with all! —
And all day, the iron wheels are droning;
And sometimes we could pray,
‘O ye wheels’ (breaking out in a mad moaning),
‘Stop! be silent for to-day!’"
VIII
Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other
breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth —
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth!
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals —
Let them prove their inward souls against the notion
That they live in you, or under you, O wheels! —
Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,
As if Fate in each were stark;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.
IX
Now tell the poor young children, O my
brothers,
That they look to Him and pray —
So the blessed One, who blesseth all the others,
Will bless them another day.
They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us,
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word!
And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door;
Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,
Hears our weeping any more?
X
"Two words, indeed, of praying we
remember;
And at midnight's hour of harm —
‘Our Father’, looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words, except ‘Our Father’,
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within His right hand which is strong.
‘Our father!’ If he heard us, He would surely
(For they call Him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely
‘Come and rest with me, my child.’
XI
"But, no!" say the children,
weeping faster,
"He is speechless as a stone;
And they tell us, of his image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
"Go to!" say the children — "up in heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
Do not mock us: grief has made us unbelieving:
We look up for God; but tears have made us blind."
Do you hear the children weeping and disprovlng,
O my brothers, what ye preach?
For God's possible is taught by his world's loving —
And the children doubt of each.
XII
And well may the children weep before
you!
They are weary ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun.
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom;
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm:
Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly
The harvest of its memories cannot reap;
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly —
Let them weep! let them weep!
XIII
They look up with their pale and sunken
faces,
And their look is dread to see.
For they mind you of their angels in high places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
"How long", they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart —
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart!
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath".
(1843)
Source: http://www.uv.es/~fores/poesia/cry.html
Elizabeth Barrett
Browning wrote “The cry of the Children” between 1842 and 1843, and it was
finally published in 1843.
“The cry of the Children”
is one of the best examples of poems that tell us how children really lived at
that time. In fact, according to David Cody (Victorian web), Children of
poor families had to work more than 16 hours a day under atrocious conditions,
they worked in iron and coal mines (where most of them began to work at the age
of 5 and they died before they were 25), constructions, match factories etc.
Most children died sooner because of their physical deterioration.
According to P.
Gaskell (Victorian Web) the effects of working in those conditions are
injurious to the physical growth of a child, in fact children´s legs curve, and
the whole body loses height. For example, we can read some testimonies gathered
by Ashley's
Mines Commission, added by Laura Del Col to the
Victorian Web. In that page, we find the testimony of a child called Sarah
Gooder and who is 8 years old. She tells us that she a trapper in the Gawber
pit. She says that “This work does not
tire me, but I have to trap without a light and I'm scared. I go at four and
sometimes half past three in the morning, and come out at five and half past. I
never go to sleep. Sometimes I sing when I've light, but not in the dark; I
dare not sing then. I don't like being in the pit. I am very sleepy when I go
sometimes in the morning. I go to Sunday-schools and read
To refer to the poem
itself, Elizabeth Barrett adopts a realistic stance because she is worried
about children who are dying. And the Church, the Government and people do
nothing to help them. Thus, to express her feelings of fury, impotence and disdain,
she uses a moving, a negative and a strong vocabulary, such as “they are weeping bitterly” (line 10); “sorrow” (line 13); “pale and sunken faces” (line 25); “graves” (line 36); “die”
(line 38); “death in life” (line 54);
“poor young children” (line 101); “harm”
(line 114); ,”grief” (line 131); “slaves” (line 143); “cruel nation” (line 153); “sob” (line 159) and “wrath” (160).
As
far as the structure of the poem is concerned, we observe that “The cry of the
children” is well structured; it is divided into thirteen stanzas, each of one
of twelve lines. And what has impressed
me is that the last line of each stanza contains a second meaning and we can
find irony in most of these lines, such us “in
the country of the free” (line 12); “in
our happy Fatherland” (line 24); “and
the graves are for the old” (line
36)…
Personally, I have been
terribly upset by this poem, but really I love it. I admire Elizabeth Barrett
because of her guts to write this poem which is too realistic and at the same
time cruel and strong. I consider that
The whole poem has
affected me, in my opinion, the strongest sentence of the poem is when children
talk about a Father (God) who will take them to the sky to rest and sleep, but
they refused him because God has commanded them to work and they think that
Father wanted to mock them. In fact, they know perfectly that their fate is to
work, to be miserable and to die young.
As I have said before,
this poem reflects how youngsters lived at that age but if we analyse our
present situation, we discover that many children go to school, enjoy playing
with toys… but there are others who are living in the same conditions like
those of the poem. That is, they do not know how to read and to write. They
only work all day and they earn little money, and moreover, most of them are
dying because they have nothing to eat. And it is cruel that today this big and
serious problem still exits, and furthermore, the worst of it is that everybody
knows this problem and only few people try to help them. And unfortunately
Governments and the
To conclude, I think that
this poem should be read by everybody and should affect the humanity and
Governments do not waste money. They should fight against children’s
exploitation and then, all children should enjoy their childhood.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
v
Cody,
David, Associate Professor of English,
Child Labor
Victorian Web.
Literature, history and culture in the age of
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/newman6.html
v
P.
Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population of
The Physical
Deterioration of the Textile Workers
The Life of the
Industrial Worker in
Laura Del Col,
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/workers2.html
v
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, The Cry of the Children
The Norton Anthology of
English Literature
http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/victorian/topic_1/children.htm
v
Laura Del Col
(added by),
[Parliamentary Papers, 1842, vols. XV-XVII, Appendix I, pp. 252,
258, 439, 461; Appendix II, pp. 107, 122, 205. The second of the three great
reports embodies the results of the investigation into the conditions of labour
in the mines made by Lord Ashley's Mines Commission of 1842. The Mines Act of
1842 that resulted prohibited the
employment
in the mines of all women and of boys under thirteen.]
Testimony Gathered by
Ashley's Mines Commission
Victorian Web. Literature,
history and culture in the age of
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/ashley.html
|
Reading
module 04: Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
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Reading module 10: Deconstruction
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Academic year 2006 (May 2006)
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Ana Mª Pardillos Murillo
Universitat de València Press
mailto:aparmu@alumni.uv.es