The Cry of the Children (poem)

"The Cry of the Children" is a poem by English writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It examines children’s manual labor forced upon them by ruler(s). It was published in August 1843 in Blackwood's Magazine.^[1]

Background

Browning wrote about contemporary topics, particularly liberal causes of her day, as critic Stephen Greenblatt argues, (2013) Elizabeth Barrett Browning (pp. 1993–1994). For instance, in "The Cry of the Children", Browning portrays children being underground the majority of their young lives, dragging wheelbarrows, and working long hours. One says young life because they are made to work in harsh conditions which cause their lungs and hearts to rapidly dysfunction. In this poem she uses a young lamb bleating in the meadows to represent the young children crying from whatever pains they must endure at the moment. Browning involves young animals to symbolize innocence and being put through both mental and physical pain for the satisfaction of an owner (1842). It is intelligent for the poet to do this as a reader can put themself in that position to understand how intense the conditions were.

"The Cry of the Children" by Browning is not a twelve stanza poem which consists of a terza rima rhyme scheme. Terza rima is an ABA BCB CDC DED and so on, rhyme scheme. Browning uses ABAB CDCD EFEF throughout the poem. This is superior as it makes the poem’s main idea straightforward. This leads readers to Browning's key point, the death of children because they are forced to work from a very tender age and they pray to God to be taken before their time of actual death (BeamingNotes, 2015). Browning best describes this in lines 51-52 as the children say “It is good when it happens, that we die before our time” and in lines 86-87 the children pray for the absurdly noises to come to an end (Browning, 1842).

The melancholy tone of the poem befits the children’s predicaments. Not only that, it coincides with the rhyme scheme and symbolism. For instance, if the reader were to read the poem as a ballad, he/she would hear the rhyme scheme and be able to put him- or hserself in the position of the children. When Browning uses the young animals to symbolizes the children’s innocence, by paying attention to the tone one can tell it is not an exciting situation (Browning, 1842). Overall, Browning’s use of tone, symbolism, and rhyme scheme help readers understand the underlying “truth” as to why children were forced to complete manual labor by their ruler(s).

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References