16 The Cry of the Children (1844)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The Cry of the Children” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (then Elizabeth Barrett) was first published in the August 1843 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. However, we are using the version published in the second volume of her 1844 collection Poems, which is available in full on Google Books. The poem is in the public domain.
The editorial notes are available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Unless otherwise attributed, they were written by Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston at the University of Saskatchewan.
The Cry of the Children
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“φεύ, φεύ, τι προσδερκεσθε μ ‘ ομμασιν, τεκνα.”
Medea.[1]
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.
5
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 brothers,
10
They are weeping bitterly!—
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?
15
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—
20
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?
25
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;”
30
“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—
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And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old!”
“True,” say the children, “it may happen
That we die before our time!
Little Alice died last year—the grave is shapen
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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.’
45
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries;
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
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The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
It is good when it happens,” say the children,
“That we die before our time!”
Alas, the wretched children! they are seeking
Death in life, as best to have!
55
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
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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!
65
“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—
70
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—
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Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
“For all day, the wheels are droning, turning,—
Their wind comes in our faces,—
Till our hearts turn,—our heads, with pulses burning,
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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!—
85
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!’“
Ay! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
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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—
95
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,
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Spin on blindly in the dark.
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.
105
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)
110
Strangers speaking at the door:
Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,
Hears our weeping any more?
“Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight’s hour of harm,—
115
‘Our Father,’ looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.[2]
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,
120
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.’
125
“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,
130
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 ye hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach?
135
For God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving—
And the children doubt of each.
And well may the children weep before you;
They are weary ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
140
Which is brighter than the sun:
They know the grief of man, but not the wisdom;
They sink in the despair, without the calm—
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,—
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,—
145
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
No dear remembrance keep,—
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:
Let them weep! let them weep!
They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
150
And their look is dread to see,
For they think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity;—
“How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,—
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Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants,
And your purple shews your path;
But the child’s sob curseth deeper in the silence
160
Than the strong man in his wrath!”
Works Cited
Barrett, Elizabeth Barrett. “The Cry of the Children.” Poems, vol. 2, Edward Moxon, 1844, pp. 127–135. Google Books, www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Poems_of_Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning/4DUJAAAAQAAJ.
Barret, Elizabeth B. “The Cry of the Children.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 54, no. 334, William Blackwood and Sons, 1843, pp. 260–262. Google Books, www.google.ca/books/edition/Blackwood_s_Edinburgh_Magazine/y2hHAQAAMAAJ.
- This epigraph from Euripedes’s play Medea translates to “Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.” Barrett Browning added it to the poem when she published it in her 1844 book, Poems. ↵
- [Browning’s Note] A fact rendered pathetically historical by Mr. Horne’s report of his commission. The name of the poet of “Orion” and “Cosmo de’Medici” has, however, a change of associations; and comes in time to remind me (with other noble instances) that we have some brave poetic heat of literature still,—though open to the reproach, on certain points, of being somewhat gelid in our humanity. ↵
