Elizabeth Barrett Browning, E.B.B. (1806-1861)
“The Cry of the Children” (1843)
Editorial Introduction
By Mary Tran
This poem resonates with me personally as I grew up in a culture where children were expected to join and share with the adults the burdens of daily living and survival. House chores as well as taking part of the family business are the norm. During the Vietnam War, my mom had to quit school to help her mother glean food from the fields to help feed the family. But that was the end of similarities.
The Victorian Period was brutal to the poor especially the poor children. In the late 1700’s, England had a welfare system called the Speenhamland System and it supplemented the poor according to current bread prices (Boyer). The help was called “outhouse” assistance. As the Industrial Revolution ramped up, more people moved to the cities at the same time as the factories got hungrier for workers. The poor were enticed to get assistance, but the help was “inhouse.” This policy meant that the poor had to live in workhouses where conditions were cramped and unsanitary, meals were sparse in sustenance and variety, and they had to work 10 to 12 hours a day minimum – to get assistance. Once in, it was very hard to get out. Families were also separated; children were set to work even at the tender age of 5 or 6 (The Children Who Built Victorian Britain).
In the annotations, I have added visuals to help the readers see how abysmal these poor Victorian children’s lives were. We get a sense of that from EBB through lines such
as:
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.
The goal in my annotations and in the Supplementary Resources in the green box below is to let the readers see a fraction of the suffering the children endured. These, along with some notations of Victorian social values modern readers may not have caught at first glance, are tools I hope will add a more concrete understanding of what spurred Elizabeth Barrett (at the time) to write such an impetuous, powerfully social conscious piece of work calls “The Cry of the Children” in 1843.
Works Cited
- Alexandrova, A. P. ” Children”s life in Victorian era.” Ученые записки Орловского государственного университета. Серия: Гуманитарные и социальные науки 1 (70) (2016): 9-12.
- Bouchard, Nicole. “Textual Revisions and Constructed Narratives in Elizabeth Barrett’s “Cry of the Children.” 19CRS, June 28, 2017.
- Boyer, George R. “The Economic Role of the English Poor Law, 1780-1834.” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 45, no. 2, 1985, pp. 452–54. JSTOR,. Accessed 21 Nov. 2025.
- The Children Who Built Victorian Britain. Directed by Julian Carey, BBC, 2011.
- Nardinelli, Clark. “Child Labor and the Factory Acts.” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 40, no. 4, 1980, pp. 739–55. JSTOR, . Accessed 22 Nov. 2025.
- Robertson, Linda K. “Writers, Social Conscience, and the ‘Other’ Victorian England.” Studies in Browning and His Circle, vol. 20, 1992, pp. 132–36. JSTOR, . Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.
- Stewart, Suzy. “Victorian Child Labor and the Conditions They Worked In.” Victorian Children. Accessed 28 February, 2025.
- @UndergroundBirmingham. “I found a hole in the middle of nowhere, and threw my bag inside.” YouTube, 23 October, 2025.
Background
A two-volume anthology, Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett, later Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was published in 1844, to great critical acclaim. The most significant verse in the collection was a powerful sentimental work, ‘The Cry of the Children’, which had first appeared the previous year in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Barrett believed that ‘ethical poetry is the highest of all poetry forms’. She had been shocked by a parliamentary report published by the Children’s Employment Commission in 1842, which recorded the appalling conditions endured by children working in mines and factories. Her condemnation helped to raise public awareness of the problem, and garnered support for Lord Shaftesbury’s Ten Hours Bill.
Background Text is a derivative of “The Cry of the Children” from “Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians” ©The British Library Board,licensed under CC-BY 4.0
Reading Questions and Resources
Annotations are available for this poem. To learn how to view them, please see the How To View and Use Hypothesis Annotations help page.
Reading Questions
- How and where does “Cry of the Children” condemn the failures of patriarchy, be that social, religious, or otherwise?
- Where and why do these children envy the elderly?
- Compare and contrast the speaker’s voice with that of the recorded speech from others. How are the different voices working in concert? How are they working in opposition (or are they)?
- How does the epigraph from Medea prep the reader for the poem? How would the poem function differently if the epigraph were not there?
- Does the poem evidence an anti-Romantic view of the natural world?
- To whom and toward what does E.B.B. aim her critique? How do you know?
Supplemental Information
A video of a mine exploration
Although it’s not a mine in England, the narrowness, the rails, the rock embedded dirt, the long tunnels are everything a Victorian child working in the mines would have had to deal with.
A documentary detailing the claim that the British Empire was built on the backs of little children
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 brothers,
They are weeping bitterly! 10
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?
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: 20
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?
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!” 30
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!”
“True,” say the children, “it may happen
That we die before our time!
Little Alice died last year her grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime. 40
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 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
The shroud, by the kirk-chime! 50
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!
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! 60
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!
“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; 70
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.
“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 80
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! ‘ “
Ay ! be silent ! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth — 90
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. 100
Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up 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: 110
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, —
‘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. 120
‘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.’
“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! 130
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?
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
Which is brighter than the sun: 140
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
They sink in the 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
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,
And their look is dread to see, 150
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, —
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
Than the strong man in his wrath!” 160
- Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children. ↵
- "One of Euripides’ most powerful and best known plays, Medea (431 BC; Greek Mēdeia) is a remarkable study of the mistreatment of a woman and of her ruthless revenge. The Colchian princess Medea has been taken by the hero Jason to be his wife. They have lived happily for some years at Corinth and have two sons. But then Jason casts Medea off and decides to marry the Princess of Corinth. Medea is determined on revenge, and after a dreadful mental struggle between her passionate sense of injury and her love for her children, she decides to punish her husband by murdering both the Corinthian princess and their own sons, thereby leaving her husband to grow old with neither wife nor child. She steels herself to commit these deeds and then escapes in the chariot of her grandfather, the sun-god Helios, leaving Jason without even the satisfaction of punishing her for her crimes. Euripides succeeds in evoking sympathy for the figure of Medea, who becomes to some extent a representative of women’s oppression in general." Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica. ↵
