“The Cry of the Children” Summary

• Do you hear the children crying, brothers of mine, before they are even old enough to know sorrow? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers for comfort, but even that cannot make them feel better. Out in nature, the young lambs are baaing in the meadows, the young birds are chirping in their nests, the young fawns are playing in the woods, and the young flowers are being blown about by the wind. But here, these children, who are so young, my brothers—they are bitterly crying! While other children play, these child laborers are crying—right here, in our so-called free country.

  Have you thought to ask these poor young children why they are crying so much? Old men mourn their pasts, though their futures were lost long ago—just as old trees in the forest shed their leaves; just as the year ends with the winter frost; just as an old wound, if re-opened, hurts the most; and just as old hopes are hardest to let go of. But the young, young children, brothers of mine, do you ask them why they stand there crying out in pain, while they are still young enough to press themselves against their mothers' breasts—here, in our supposedly happy homeland?

  The children look up with their pale and worn-out faces, and it's so sad to see how terrible they look—for their childish faces display the kind of worn-out suffering seen in grown men. They say, "Your old earth is a gloomy place, and even though we're young, our feet are so tired. We haven't been alive for long yet we're already exhausted—and we have so far to go before we can rest in our graves. Instead of asking us what's wrong, you should ask the old people why they cry. Because the world is cold and unwelcoming to us, and we young ones have been totally abandoned, left to wonder why the graves are only for the old."

  "It's true," the children admit, "that we might die young. Little Alice died last year, and her grave is like a snowball in the ice. We looked into the pit they dug for her, and saw there was no room for any work down there in that narrow grave! No one can wake her up from her sleep, even if we cry, 'Get up, little Alice! It's daytime!' If you listen by that grave, rain or shine, with your ear down to the earth, you'll never hear little crying anymore. If we could see her now, we wouldn't even recognize her—because now her smile has time to reach her eyes, and her existence is a happy one, soothed and slowed by her burial shroud and the tolling of the church bells. It's a good thing," the children say, "when we die young."

  Oh, those poor children! They welcome death as preferable to life; they harden their hearts with the wax cloth used to wrap a corpse. Run away, children, from the mine and the city! Sing, children, as the baby birds do. Pick handfuls of pretty flowers in the meadow and laugh aloud as you run your fingers through them! I urge them so, but they only answer, "Are your flowers like our weeds near the mine? Leave us alone in the dark of the coalmines, do not taunt us with your fine pleasures!"

  "Because," the children say, "we're so tired, we can't run or jump. If we cared about meadows at all, it would only be to fall down in them and sleep. Our knees shake with pain from being bent over all day, and we fall over onto our faces just trying to move. Through our droopy eyelids, even the brightest flower would look pale and dreary. That's because, all day long, we exhaust ourselves dragging our burdens through the dark of the underground coal mines; or, all day long, we push the iron factory wheels around and around.

  "All day long, the wheels drone and spin. We feel the force of them in our faces, until our own hearts and heads spin and throb too, and the walls themselves seem to spin as well. The blank sky in the distant window seems to spin, the light on the wall seems to spin, the black flies that crawl on the ceiling seem to spin. Everything spins, all day long, ourselves included. And all day, the wheels drone on and on; sometimes, we wish we could beg, moaning like madmen, "Oh, wheels! Stop! Be quiet, just for one day!"

  Yes, be silent! Let the children actually hear each other's breath, just for a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands and be reconnected with the innocence of their youth! Let them understand that cold industrialism is not the only life God creates or makes possible. Let them test their souls against the false notion that they live forever in your clutches, oh wheels of industry! Still, all day long, the iron wheels keep turning, grinding life down from what it ought to be, and the children's souls, which God calls toward the light, keep spinning in the dark.

  Now tell the poor young children, brothers of mine, to look up to God and pray; tell them they should pray so that the goodhearted God, who blesses everyone, will keep on blessing them as well. The children answer, "What makes God so special, that he can somehow hear us over the noise of the spinning iron wheels? When we sob out loud, our fellow human beings pass right by; they don't hear us, or even worse, they choose not to answer our cries. And we cannot hear (due to the noise of the wheels) if anyone speaks to us through the door. So why would God, with angels singing all around Him, hear our cries anymore?

  "We do remember two words of prayer, and at the deadly midnight hour, we whisper 'Our Father,' and look up toward the ceiling, as though these words might be magic. We know no other prayers, except 'Our Father," and we hope that, if the angels' song should stop singing for a moment, God might gather up our two words in this moment of silence, and hold them both in His strong right hand. 'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely (Wouldn't he? For they call Him good and kind!) answer, and smile down at the distant world, very sincerely, saying, 'Come and rest with me, my child.'

  "But no!" the children say, crying even harder, "God is silent as a rock. And the powerful insist that the boss who commands us to keep working is made in God's image. Go to Heaven!" say the children, "Up in Heaven, all we can imagine are dark clouds that spin like iron wheels. Do not mock us with your words of prayer; grief has made unfaithful. We look for God, but tears have blocked our vision, and we cannot find faith." Do you hear the children crying and putting to shame, brothers of mine, all those religious niceties you preach? For the promise of God is shown via the world's love, and the children do not believe in that promise nor in the world's love.

  The children have every right to stand there crying! They are exhausted before they can even move. They have never seen the sunshine, or the light of God, which is even brighter than the sun. They know a grown man's grief, but do not share his wisdom. They drown in despair, without the reassurance of life experience. They are slaves, denied the freedom of God's grace; they are martyrs, suffering like Christ even though they haven't been nailed to the cross. They are worn-out as if with age, yet denied memories of a long life to look back upon. They are orphans, denied love and care here on earth and up in heaven. Let them cry! Let them cry!

  They look up, with their pale and worn-out faces, and their look chills you to the bone, for they think we see them dead already, angels in heaven turned toward God. "How long," they say, "how long, cruel nation, will you stand on a child's heart in order to carry on the world's affairs? How long will you crush a child's heartbeat with your armored heel, walking onward to your capitalist throne? Our blood splashes you, you greedy tyrant, even as a royal purple carpet unrolls before you. But know this: a child's sob ringing out in the silence is a curse far more powerful than even a strong man's rage."

“The Cry of the Children” Themes

• 

  The Immorality of Child Labor

  “The Cry of the Children” is a poem about the experiences of child laborers in England during the Industrial Revolution. Toggling between the voice of a sympathetic speaker and the words of the children themselves, the poem calls attention to the cruelty of exploiting children as workers and argues that such exploitation destroys childhood innocence. Ultimately, the poem insists that child labor is a deeply immoral practice and seeks to persuade its audience that the exploitation of children must end.

  Fittingly, given the title, most of the poem is dedicated to the children’s “cries” as they recount their plight. They testify to their unspeakable working conditions—“all day, we drag our burden tiring / through the coal-dark, underground”—as well as to their exhaustion and despair. By presenting these details in the children’s own voices—“we are weary, / and we cannot run or leap”—the poem hammers home again and again how wrong it is to force children to do hard labor, especially under conditions that even an adult would shrink from.

  Additionally, throughout the poem, the speaker argues that child laborers in the mines and factories have been forced to mature before their time, and that this loss of their childhood innocence is itself immoral. Toward this end, the speaker compares the children’s “bitter” tears and “sunken faces” to those of haggard old men, and makes clear that there is a cruel irony in an adult mourning the past and “weep[ing] for his to-morrow” when he has had so many of them, while child laborers weep because they have had their tomorrows stolen.

  The poem also tells the tragic tale of Little Alice, a child laborer who dies. Disturbingly, however, rather than mourn her death, the children celebrate that Alice can finally rest. “It is good when it happens […] that we die before our time!” they cry, a shocking statement that indicates these children have lost their hope of resting in life itself. The speaker then cries, “Alas, alas, the children!” leaving no doubt that the poem views the children’s reaction as tragic, and that any system that causes children to welcome death is an immoral one.

  Morality comes most explicitly into play, however, towards the end of the poem, when the speaker invokes God and religion as a potential force for good. The children swiftly reveal these hopes to be unfounded: “Is it likely God […] Hears our weeping any more?” In their eyes, God resembles “the master / Who commands us to work on,” and religious values exist only as talking points. This portion of the poem indicts child labor as an immoral force on a literal level, since it has stripped children of their religious faith and values.

  The poem closes on a righteous note, condemning the “cruel nation” that crushes children’s lives in its dedication to “the mart,” or marketplace. It describes the child laborers as “martyrs” and their exploiters as “gold-heaper[s],” and depicts the prioritization of wealth and capitalism over children’s well-being as deeply depraved.

  However, the poem also offers the opportunity to imagine a different set of priorities, by posing this condemnation in the form of a question: “how long” must this immoral cruelty go on? Implicit in this question is the suggestion that the country could change its values and prioritizes, if it wanted to, and thus put an end to the horrific practice of child labor.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  Classism and Injustice

  Though “The Cry of the Children” is primarily focused on the experiences of child laborers, it is also deeply attuned to the vast distance between the rich and the poor in industrializing England, and the way the upper and middle classes’ greed and ignorance are responsible for the exploitation of working-class children. The poem explicitly condemns this classism and selfishness, both on an individual and a societal level.

  Throughout the poem, many of the scenes and images that capture the immorality of child labor are also used to point to the wide gap between the rich and the poor. For instance, the child laborers “weeping in the playtime of the others” serve as a reminder of the stark difference between the lives of poor children and rich ones, due only to their class.

  Likewise, the poem’s use of nature imagery also often reveals a gap between the experiences of the rich and poor. For example, when urged to flee to the countryside to frolic, the child laborers beg the speaker to “leave us […] from your pleasures fair and fine”; even just hearing about joys and pleasures they themselves cannot partake in is painful.

  Not only does the poem frequently draw attention to these social inequalities, but it also rebukes the middle and upper classes for selfishly turning a blind eye to injustice. This occurs most often through a direct address to the poem’s readers, whom the speaker refers to as “my brothers.” “Do you question the young children […] why their tears are falling so?” the speaker demands, a rhetorical question that suggests the upper classes in fact do not ask questions about the workings of their own society, and thus willfully ignore the exploitation of working-class children in their midst. At one point, the speaker begs, “Let them touch each other’s hands” and “Let them prove their inward souls,” confirming that the poem’s intended audience is indeed those who have the power to “let” these children lead different lives—in other words, the very institutions and members of society who depend on child labor, and thus prefer to ignore its human cost.

  However, as the children themselves confirm, this audience is indifferent to their plight. Later in the poem, the children describe “human creatures” who, in response to their sobs, simply “pass by,” ignoring the sound and letting their exploitation go on. The speaker’s references to “the country of the free” and “our happy Fatherland” must therefore be read as ironic indictments of 19th-century England, not as honest praise; the poem makes devastatingly clear that everyone in England is not equally free or happy, least of all child laborers. As such, these references serve as a pointed reminder to those who are living freely and happily that their lifestyles are founded on the exploitation of others, namely those in a lower class than themselves.

  Ultimately, the poem closes with a resounding and explicit condemnation of the greed that underpins the entire exploitative system of child labor, which is itself part of the structures of industrialization and capitalism. In an image that casts child laborers as “martyrs” and the wealthy benefitting from their labor as “gold-heapers” (who “tread onward to [their] throne amid the mart” while the children’s “blood splashes upward”) the children denounce the selfish, classist society that treats their lives as disposable, and privileges wealth and economic gain above all else. They conclude by arguing that a “child’s sob in the silence curses deeper / than the strong man,” an implicit reference to the poem itself—both a sob and curse—leaving no question as to how the poem views those who let them suffer.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  The Human Cost of Industrialization

  In addition to criticizing child labor, “The Cry of the Children” also strongly condemns industrialization as a whole. This was a timely subject when the poem was first published. In the 1840s, England was shifting from a largely agricultural economy to one increasingly centered on mining and manufacturing, which became the subject of great societal and political debate. The poem clearly picks a side in this argument—using vivid imagery, it depicts industrial settings as hellish and deadly, while the countryside is portrayed as peaceful and heavenly. Ultimately, the poem argues that industrial labor is an unnatural way of life that robs people of their humanity.

  The poem is primarily set in a wretched industrial landscape. It describes this world in great depth, from “the dark of the coal-shadows” in the mines to the “cold metallic motion” of factory life. In particular, the poem pays close attention to the deafening sound of the iron wheels, which “grind life down” whether in the mines or the factory. It also explicitly compares the child laborers to these wheels, for they too “are turning, all the day,” like cogs in a machine. The repeated emphasis on wheels and work captures the gruesome monotony of industrial life, as well as the despairing effect it has on the human soul. “'Stop! be silent for to-day!’” the children cry, but the wheels and their work drone on.

  The poem also describes industrialization’s harmful impact on the physical body and the mind. The children’s knees “tremble sorely in the stooping,” their “heavy eyelids droop,” and they describe themselves as “weak” and “weary,” sapped of any youthful energy they might otherwise have had. In addition, the way the children celebrate Little Alice’s death because it finally gives her body a chance to rest indicates that industrial life inflicts severe psychological damage as well as physical pain.

  In sharp contrast to this nightmarish industrial setting, the speaker of the poem often depicts the natural world as a heavenly place of refuge. The speaker laments that child laborers “have never seen the sunshine” and uses natural imagery as metaphors for human growth and development, essentially equating human well-being with the natural world in much the same way industrial life represents human misery.

  In particular, the natural world takes on special significance for children, as the speaker draws a clear connection between nature and an ideal vision of childhood innocence, then makes strikingly clear that child laborers cannot access either. At one point, the speaker urges child laborers to “go out […] from the mine and from the city” and “pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty,” but the children confess they are unfamiliar with meadows and flowers, and that even if they could visit the countryside, they would simply “drop down […] and sleep.”

  In sum, the poem paints a clear picture of industrialization as a force that robs people of their humanity—both figuratively transforming them into machinery and literally grinding down their bodies and spirits until they die. The natural world stands in profound relief as a better, purer alternative, equated with childhood innocence and human happiness—but the poem makes devastatingly clear that it remains out of reach for those condemned to an industrial life, who know no other existence than their own.

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.
• 

  God and Religion

  In the latter half of “The Cry of the Children,” the poem turns to God and religion. Though the speaker clearly believes in a God who wants the best for all humanity, including child laborers, the children themselves do not, insisting that God does not hear their prayers or seem to care about their plight. The poem very pointedly lays this lack of faith at the feet of society at large, delivering a scathing rebuke of those who promise heavenly reward rather than seeking to end exploitation on earth. Ultimately, the speaker directly addresses the poem’s readers, calling on their religious values and pushing them to move past pious words and intentions to meaningful moral action.

  After clearly establishing the children’s misery, the speaker argues that they deserve to know that their suffering “is not all the life God fashions or reveals.” The speaker even insists that God “is calling sunward” the children’s souls, and wants better for them than their lives of toil. These lines make clear that, in the speaker’s worldview, God is a moral force for good who wishes for humanity’s well-being.

  Nevertheless, the speaker does not feel the same way about the people responsible for bringing God’s word to life on earth. With a heavy helping of sarcasm, the speaker instructs the poem’s audience to do what they normally do in the face of suffering: “Now tell the poor young children […] To look up to Him and pray.” The hypocrisy of this gesture—telling impoverished children prayer will solve their problems—is immediately revealed by the children themselves. They chime in, “Who is God that He should hear us?” and argue, “Is it likely God […] hears our weeping any more?”

  Over the next two stanzas, the child laborers dismantle any notion that a heavenly power is enough to put an end to their suffering. They describe their desperate pleas falling on deaf ears, both human and divine, and ultimately reveal that they have lost all faith: “Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving— / We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.”

  After allowing the children’s moving testimony to hammer home the injustice of relying on faith as a solution to social ills, the speaker then offers a fierce indictment of readers’ own hypocrisy: “Do ye hear the children weeping and disproving, / O my brothers, what ye preach?” The speaker makes the case that religious beliefs and pious words are not enough to ensure a moral world, arguing that society’s supposed religious values must be backed up by action—“For God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving.”

  The speaker culminates this argument by decrying that these children “have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory” of God, and explicitly linking “liberty” and “Christdom.” In short, the speaker argues that child laborers have been denied the spiritual benefits of faith, specifically Christian faith, which the speaker views as endowing people with eternal heavenly freedom—but not through any fault of their own. Instead, the speaker paints child laborers as religious "martyrs" and “orphans,” abandoned by those who might have saved their souls by making Christianity’s values reality.

  Finally, the speaker and the poem explicitly argue for society to change its ways and do otherwise, asking “How long, O cruel nation, / Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart?”

  • See where this theme is active in the poem.

Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Cry of the Children”

• Before Line 1, Lines 1-4

  "Pheu pheu, ti prosderkesthe m ommasin, tekna;"
  [[Alas, alas, why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children.]]—Medea.
  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 epigraph to "The Cry of the Children" comes from Euripides’s Greek tragedy Medea, which is about a woman who murders her children. This shocking invocation of infanticide is the poem's first indictment of its readers, implicitly suggesting that the English people who let child labor take place are in essence responsible for the death of the nation's children. The specific line quoted ("Why do you gaze at me with your eyes, my children") introduces a central theme of the poem: children's own perspectives on their exploitation and harm.

  The first four lines of the poem proper reflect this theme as well. The speaker uses a rhetorical question to immediately implicate and criticize readers of the poem for their role in the practice of child labor. When asking if the poem's readers "hear the children weeping," the speaker is well aware that these readers do not—that they are either ignorant or indifferent to working-class children's plight. This early use of apostrophe makes clear that the poem as a whole is intended a form of direct address to a specific set of readers: the speaker's "brothers."

  By referring to the poem's readers as "my brothers," the speaker also implies fellowship or kinship with the poem's audience. This act of inclusion serves as an olive branch, extending a welcome to the poem's readers and establishing trust and familiarity, even as the line scolds those readers at the same time.

  On the other hand, the children's identities as child laborers have not yet been established by this point in the poem. They are just "the children." However, lines 3 and 4 make clear that these children suffer an extraordinary grief, well beyond the usual troubles of childhood. Not even their mothers can "stop their tears." As the second line states, these children's "sorrow" greatly outweighs their years, or age. All of these lines hint at the children's identities as working-class, exploited laborers.

• Lines 5-12

  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!
  They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
        In the country of the free.

  

  

  

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• Lines 13-20

  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.

  

  

  

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• Lines 21-24

  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?

  

  

  

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• Lines 25-30

  They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
        And their looks are sad to see,
  For the man's 's hoary anguish draws and presses
        Down the cheeks of infancy.
  "Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;
     Our young feet," they say, "are very weak;

  

  

  

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• Lines 31-36

  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."

  

  

  

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• Lines 37-40

  "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.

  

  

  

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• Lines 41-46

  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:

  

  

  

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• Lines 47-52

  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."

  

  

  

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• Lines 53-56

  Alas, alas the 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.

  

  

  

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• Lines 57-64

  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!

  

  

  

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• Lines 65-70

  "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;

  

  

  

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• Lines 71-76

  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.

  

  

  

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• Lines 77-82

  "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 drops adown the wall,

  

  

  

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• Lines 83-88

  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,' moaning breaking out in a mad
        'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"

  

  

  

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• Lines 89-94

  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:

  

  

  

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• Lines 95-100

  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,
        Grinding life down from its mark;
  And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
        Spin on blindly in the dark.

  

  

  

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• Lines 101-106

  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?

  

  

  

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• Lines 107-112

  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?

  

  

  

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• Lines 113-124

  "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.'

  

  

  

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• Lines 125-132

  "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."

  

  

  

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• Lines 133-136

  Do you 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.

  

  

  

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• Lines 137-142

  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 the despair, without its calm:

  

  

  

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• Lines 143-148

  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!

  

  

  

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• Lines 149-152

  They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
        And their look is dread to see,
  For they think you see their angels in high places,
        With eyes turned on Deity.

  

  

  

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• Lines 153-160

  "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."

  

  

  

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“The Cry of the Children” Symbols

• 

  Tears

  Tears are everywhere in "The Cry of the Children," including the poem's title, which implies both meanings of the word "cry"—to shed tears, and to call or speak out. This dual meaning is key to understanding how tears work as a symbol throughout the poem.

  First and foremost, tears in this poem are indicative of literal "weeping" and, of course, the emotions that accompany crying. However, this weeping should not be mistaken for ordinary childish tears, shed over a skinned knee or a lost toy. "They are weeping bitterly!" the speaker exclaims at one point, emphasizing that the child laborers' tears are unique: they express the children's extreme grief and pain as a result of their exploitation.

  Even the children's mothers "cannot stop their tears," and are unable to bring comfort as a mother ordinarily might. When the poem compares the children's tears to those of an old man mourning his past, the speaker seems to suggest that the two types of weeping are not equal, and that the children's tears are caused by worse suffering. Later, the children themselves equate their tears with suffering and hard labor, when they report that now that she is dead, "little Alice never cries." The children's tears thus serve an important symbolic purpose in indicating for the reader just how grim and desperate the child laborers' lives really are.

  In addition, the children's tears throughout the poem also function as a form of protest, symbolizing the children's "cry" as they speak out against the injustice of their situation. Given the poem's title, readers might assume that each portion of the poem written in the children's voices is a kind of "cry," and indicative of both meanings of the word. Thus the children's verbal expression of their anger, sorrow, and frustration, and their unflinching indictment of those responsible, is linked to the literal tears they shed.

  No wonder, then, that the speaker draws attention again and again to these tears: "Do ye hear the children weeping" and "Do you question [...] why their tears are falling so?" The speaker is not really asking that readers pay attention to the tears welling in the children's eyes or dripping down their cheeks, but rather to what they have to say—that they are being horribly exploited.

  These tears thus symbolize speaking truth to power. The children themselves also make this connection at the poem's conclusion, when they state that children's tears are mightier than even a powerful man's anger: "The child's sob in the silence curses deeper / Than the strong man in his wrath." This closing line affirms that the entire poem can be read as a "sob in the silence," in which the exploited children speak out against an injustice that the rest of the world prefers to ignore, as well as "curse" upon the people responsible for their suffering. Tears, therefore, symbolize not just the children's pain and sorrow, but also the strength of their voices and testimony, as they cry out against their unjust plight.

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• 

  Nature

  Nature takes on symbolic significance in "The Cry of the Children" beginning with the first stanza, in which the speaker compares the weeping child laborers to "young lambs [...] bleating in the meadows," "young birds [...] chirping in the nest" and "young fawns [...] playing with the shadows." This juxtaposition of the blissful natural world with the sorrow of child laborers sets the tone for nature's role as a symbol of all that is good, human, and even heavenly in the poem.

  In particular, the natural world becomes closely associated with childhood innocence. This can be seen in these early references to baby animals, as well as when the speaker urges the children to flee the mines and factories and "pluck you handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty" instead. Though lines 57-60 ("Go out, children, from the mine [...] feel your fingers let them through!") on one level literally urge the children to go pick flowers in a meadow, they also symbolically express the speaker's wish that the children regain their lost childhoods.

  Nature also surfaces in the metaphors used to describe religious faith. "They have never known the sunshine," the speaker laments, referring simultaneously to child laborers' dark workplaces as well as their lack of faith in God, which has deprived them of the spiritual support the speaker believes that God provides.

  Similarly, by virtue of its juxtaposition against the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, the natural world also becomes symbolically linked with the fullness of human existence—as seen in the metaphor that describes looking back on a life well-lived (which the children cannot do) as "harvest[ing]" memories.

  Since the majority of the poem is dedicated to describing the hellish industrial landscape in which the children work, these fleeting references to nature stand out sharply. They serve as a reminder of what could have been had the children led different lives. However, despite the poem’s consistent use of nature imagery to depict what childhood, religious faith, and full humanity should be like, it is evident that the children at the center of the poem lack access to all three, an injustice that the poem strongly condemns.

  “The Cry of the Children” never strays from this binary in which nature is associated only with positive forces, and industry with negative ones. Some critics have argued that this cut-and-dry symbolism lacks nuance, but it also speaks to the poem’s political aims. The poet sought to stir the hearts and minds of readers who might have otherwise looked the other way regarding child labor. The black-and-white metaphors in which nature symbolizes "good" and industry symbolizes "bad" may well be a bit simplistic and moralizing, but that is part of the poem’s purpose.

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• 

  Little Alice

  Little Alice is a child laborer who dies. She is the focus of the fourth stanza, though she is not mentioned again in other sections of the poem. As the only child in the poem who receives a name or a specific identity, little Alice takes on symbolic resonance as soon as she appears. Merely by virtue of being called by her name, she helps to show that behind the many faces and voices of the child laborers—who are otherwise always discussed en masse, and only ever speak in the plural "we"—are unique human beings worthy of individual recognition and deserving of full lives.

  However, little Alice's individuality is inextricably linked to the terrible tragedy of her early death. Apart from her name and her defining characteristic—that she is "little," which implies both youthfulness and weakness—the only thing readers learn about little Alice is that she died a year ago and is finally at rest. Any other parts of her story, including whether she was a factory worker or a laborer in the coal mines, go unexplained, and are largely besides the point. Before her death, little Alice was merely one of the masses of working children. However, as a result of her death, she is transformed into a martyr (as the speaker later refers to the child laborers) and specifically identified, taking on greater symbolic significance as a victim of greed and classism.

  In addition to symbolizing the worst of child labor and industrialization, little Alice's other role in the poem is to symbolize how badly these systems have affected even the child laborers who are still living. The fact that they express surprise that there is "no room for any work" in little Alice's grave, and then go on to celebrate her death, indicates the depth of their psychological damage. Not only does child labor murder little children like Alice, her story shows that those who survive are left permanently scarred.

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• 

  Wheels

  The wheels in "The Cry of the Children" represent the grueling, monotonous labor that the children are forced to perform, as well as the oppression that they face.

  The wheels first appear in the poem when the children describe what their day-to-day lives look like. They cannot even begin to imagine frolicking among flowers in the meadow for, "all day, we drive the wheels of iron / In the factories, round and round."

  The entire next stanza is dedicated to the way the wheels' endless motion permeates every aspect of their workdays, and indeed their lives. The "droning, turning" wheels cause the children's heads to spin and their "pulses" to "burn." They also make the walls, windows, and lights seem to spin, the sky in the windows to appear blank and "reeling" (or dizzying), and the black flies "that crawl along the ceiling" to "turn" or spin as well.

  "All are turning, all the day, and we with all," the children say. In other words, they too turn and turn nonstop, just like the wheels. In short, the wheels symbolize the brutal, repetitive motions of a factory as well as the despairing effect those have on the people who work there—people who figuratively become yet another spinning wheel in the machine of industry.

  The "droning" sound of the wheels is also a vital part of their symbolic significance. In lines 87-88 ("'O ye wheels,' breaking out in a mad moaning / 'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"), the children not only plead for an end to their labor and the horrible circumstances in which they work, but explicitly link their effects to madness and despair.

  Later, the children cite the wheels as the reason their prayers go unanswered—"Who is God that He should hear us, / While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?"—as well as the likely reason that human passersby ignore their plight. The wheels drown out any possibility of the children being heard.

  The wheels thus not only symbolize the factory's grueling conditions and the suffering they cause, they also symbolize the oppression the children face. They are ignored by society, forgotten by God, and unable to make themselves heard. What's more, the wheels are so loud—and their oppression is so great—that the children cannot even hear noises from outside the factory coming in: "And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) / Strangers speaking at the door." No wonder, then, that they are so unfamiliar with meadows, or any other aspect of the natural world or life outside the factory or mines.

  The speaker says that "the iron wheels go onward / Grinding life down from its mark." The wheels are the symbol of the very forces of industry and social injustice that keep the children from any hope of a better life.

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“The Cry of the Children” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Assonance

  Assonance is a major device in "The Cry of the Children," helping to create a sense of cohesion across the poem through sound. This is particularly crucial to the poem's success since it is highly irregular in other ways, such as meter (or lack thereof) and its use of slant rhymes. In contrast, the assonance, or repetition of vowel sounds, is highly consistent from the first stanza to the last.

  This assonance draws attention to certain words and phrases in the poem. In the first stanza, the assonance (and consonance) of "birds" and "chirping" lends a bright, happy feel to this image of the natural world. In the next stanza, the long /ee/ sounds of "tree is leafless" and the long /o/ sounds of "old hope" help these striking phrases stand out for the reader.

  "The Cry of the Children" also relies on several of the same vowel sounds to create assonance in almost every stanza. The most prominent example is the poem's use of the long /ee/ sound, first introduced with "ye hear" and "weeping" in line 1. This sound resurfaces again and again, not just within the first stanza but as a major source of assonance in almost all the poem's stanzas. In the first stanza alone, it can be heard again in "leaning," "bleating," the repetition twice more of "weeping," and "free."

  In addition, the regular use of end rhyme (covered in the Rhyme Scheme section of this guide) is a major contributor to the poem's assonance, including the distinct /uh/ sound of "mothers," "brothers" and "others," which repeats several times. Ultimately, the poem's reliance on assonance as a source of euphony, as well as its preference for a shared body of vowel sounds across the poem, is a major component of what holds it together as a unified work.

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• Anaphora

  

  

  

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• Apostrophe

  

  

  

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• Metaphor

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

  

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• Imagery

  

  

  

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• Juxtaposition

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

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• Rhetorical Question

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

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• Parallelism

  

  

  

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“The Cry of the Children” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Ye
• Ere
• Bleating
• Stricken
• Bosoms
• Fatherland
• Hoary
• Anguish
• Paces
• Weary
• Rime
• Kirk-chime
• Cerement
• Thrushes
• Meadow-cowslips
• Reeling
• Wreathing
• Resounding
• Disproving
• Christdom
• Martyrs
• Pang without the palm
• Unretrievingly
• Mailed
• Palpitation
• Tread
• The mart

• An archaic word for "you."

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Cry of the Children”

• Form

  "The Cry of the Children" is not written in a specific verse form, such as a sonnet or villanelle. However, Barrett Browning does employ a fairly consistent set of formal constraints throughout the poem. It consists of 13 stanzas, each of which is 12 lines long. These stanzas can further be broken down into three quatrains, or four-line stanzas, with an ABAB rhyme scheme in each.

  The only exception to this is the fourth stanza dedicated to the death of Little Alice, which comes to a total of 16 lines—a deviation that fits its unusual nature; it is the only section of the poem to give a child laborer a name and tell her specific story.

  Barrett Browning famously believed that "ethical poetry is the highest of all poetry forms," and this poem clearly subscribes to that belief. It takes a strong ethical stance, decrying the immorality of child labor. It also takes a political position, explicitly advocating for the end of the exploitation of children as workers. Thus, though it does not adhere to a classical form, "The Cry of the Children" certainly belongs to the same family of politically- and socially-minded poetry as William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, which likewise include poems about child labor; Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Masque of Anarchy," a poem written in response to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre; and even the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier, an American poet and abolitionist whose work was also widely-known in England during Barrett Browning's time.

• Meter

  "The Cry of the Children" does not follow a consistent metrical pattern. Indeed, a major criticism of the poem at the time of publication was that its meter was difficult if not impossible to follow. (Barrett-Browning herself agreed with this critique, as she admitted later in some of her letters.)

  The first indication of this inconsistent metrical pattern is that the lines in "The Cry of the Children" are of all different lengths. Within the first stanza alone, the lines vary from 12 to 7 to 10 syllables long, and in the second stanza 9-syllable lines begin to appear as well ("The old year is ending in the frost"; "The old hope is hardest to be lost."). The third stanza introduces 11-syllable lines ("Ask the old why they weep, and not the children"), which continue to resurface in the stanzas that follow, and the fourth stanza even includes a 6-syllable line ("The shroud, by the kirk-chime"). Though within each stanza, lines of certain lengths tend to be grouped together or to alternate with one another, it is hard to predict when metrical shifts or changes will occur.

  Overall, this inconsistent meter lends the poem a feeling of spontaneity and urgency. It feels as though the words are simply spilling out of the speaker (and the children themselves) in an unpremeditated rush. This adds to the emotional quality of the poem, especially the strong sense of outrage and sorrow that both the speaker and the children feel.

• Rhyme Scheme

  Though "The Cry of the Children" has a highly irregular meter, its rhyme scheme is fairly consistent. Its 12-line stanzas can be broken down further into sets of quatrains (4-line stanzas), each of which has an ABAB rhyme scheme (with new rhyme sounds introduced in each quatrain). As such, generally speaking, each stanza overall follows this rhyme scheme, as seen clearly in stanza 2 (beginning in line 13):

  ABAB CDCD EFEF

  The exact end rhyme sounds thus change, but the alternating pattern is steady on the whole. This keeps the poem feeling unified and thoughtful. There are some variations, however. In fact, the very first stanza deviates slightly by following the pattern:

  ABAB CDCD AEAE

  Notice how, while the pattern once again alternates end rhyme sounds, it also repeats some of those sounds. In other words, after rhyming "brothers" and "mothers" in lines 1 and 3, it also rhymes "brothers" and "others" in lines 9 and 11, rather than introducing a new end rhyme sound. These sorts of slight deviations occur throughout the poem. Another example is in the second stanza, which rhymes "brothers" and "mothers" in lines 21 and 23; these lines do not rhyme with any other parts of that stanza, but do rhyme with lines in the previous stanza.

  Similarly, in the fourth stanza, which adds four extra lines for a total of 16, the poem repeats the ABAB sounds of the first four lines, rather than establish a new set of alternating end rhyme sounds:

  "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.
  [...]
  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."

  It is also important to note that many of the rhymes that contribute to this overall scheme are not perfect rhymes. Instead, the poem often uses slant rhymes, such as "meadows" and "shadows" in lines 5 and 7 and "faces" and "presses" in lines 26 and 27.

  Overall, then, poem creates a sense of unity through rhyme yet does not hesitate to bend or manipulate its rhyme scheme when necessary. This allows the poem to include images or turns of phrase that capture child labor as vividly and dramatically as possible, even if it means sacrificing the precision of an exact rhyme from line to line.

“The Cry of the Children” Speaker

• The speaker in "The Cry of the Children" is anonymous—readers don't learn the speaker's age, gender, occupation, etc. The first line of the poem does hint at the speaker's class, however, when the speaker directly addresses the poem's readers as "my brothers." Over the course of the poem, it becomes clear that "my brothers" refers to the middle and upper classes of 19th-century English society: people who may not know or care about industrial child labor, or even people who benefit from its existence. Readers can therefore deduce that the speaker is also a member of the middle or upper class, someone who sees these members of society as "brothers."

  Though the speaker shares a background with the poem's assumed audience, the speaker has decidedly different perspectives on child labor than these people do. The speaker is knowledgeable about the practice, outraged over the exploitation and mistreatment of these children, and explicitly condemns child labor as immoral.

  At the same time, the speaker understands that the poem's audience is powerful—either as factory owners, mine owners, and members of society linked to the governmental institutions responsible for labor laws, or merely as upper-class citizens whose moral outrage could potentially sway those institutions to change. The speaker therefore dedicates the poem to persuading (and sometimes shaming) this audience, pointing out how other members of society are complicit in the injustices being described, and advocating for them to put an end to the practice of exploiting children as workers.

  The speaker's identity as a middle- or upper-class person is confirmed by the children of the poem, who scoff at the speaker's own ignorance when the speaker suggests they simply leave their jobs to go pick flowers. Despite the speaker's concern and compassion for child laborers, the speaker is a newcomer to their world, a do-gooder trying to make a difference but nevertheless an outsider. Fittingly, therefore, apart from the moments when the speaker seeks to directly address and persuade the poem's audience, the speaker spends the majority of the poem elevating the children's voices, essentially working to "give voice to the voiceless."

  The children are not technically "speakers" in the poem because their lines are always in quotation marks. Nevertheless, much of the poem, including entire stanzas, is written in their voices, and their perspective is key to the poem's message and themes. Always speaking in the plural, the children are reminiscent of a Greek chorus, whose purpose in ancient plays was to guide the audience through the story, and often serve as a moral compass. Here, too, the children’s testimonies serve to shed light on and explain the circumstances of their lives and labor, as well as to move readers emotionally and goad them into advocating on their behalf.

“The Cry of the Children” Setting

• The setting of "The Cry of the Children" is the industrial landscape where child laborers work, as well as 19th-century England more broadly. Alternating between imagery of coal mines and factories, the poem dedicates many lines to describing the hellish places where exploited children work, perhaps most vividly in the seventh stanza:

  "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 drops adown 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,' moaning breaking out in a mad
  'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"

  There are also small snippets in the poem that describe natural landscapes as an alternative to the industrial spaces where the children work. These fit into the framework of the poem's larger setting, which is England in the mid-1800s, when the British Industrial Revolution was at its height. This was a time in which the country was changing rapidly, shifting from an agriculturally-based economy to one more centered on mining and manufacturing. This shift provides important context for the poem; it became a topic of enormous societal and political debate, including controversy around child labor in particular, to which this very poem contributed.

Literary and Historical Context of “The Cry of the Children”

Literary Context

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most famous poets in England during her lifetime, deeply admired for her poetry's morality and depth of feeling, as well as for her passionate engagement with social and political issues. Unusually well-educated for a woman of the Victorian era, Barrett Browning established herself as a prominent poet and writer in her youth, but lived in almost total isolation with her tyrannical father for nearly 40 years. He had forbid all his children to wed, but Barrett Browning defied his orders and eloped with fellow poet Robert Browning at the age of 39.

Barrett Browning's early poetry resembles the Romantic tradition of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron in which she was schooled. Over the course of her career, however, Barrett Browning became an increasingly experimental and innovative writer, helping to define the Victorian style of poetry. She engaged with a wide variety of poetic forms (including lyric, ballad, and narrative), while also tackling history, religion, and social and political issues.

World-renowned for her innovative and challenging verse, Barrett Browning was seriously considered as the successor to William Wordsworth's Poet Laureate when he died in 1850, but passed over for Alfred, Lord Tennyson. (No woman became poet laureate of England until Carol Ann Duffy in 2009.)

"The Cry of the Children" was first published in 1843, though it was tweaked and revised by Barrett Browning several times over the following years (the version included in this guide is based on her final edits). Like many of her poems, it is marked by a strong moral sensibility, and engages fiercely with a hot political debate of her time. It is also stylistically daring, tackling a complex topic while pushing poetic boundaries and norms.

Unsurprisingly, critical response to the poem was mixed. Some critics admired Barrett Browning's bold stance, while others disparaged her for daring to speak out on an issue considered off-limits to women. However, Barrett Browning refused to be silenced. She continued to write fiercely opinionated and politically-engaged poetry for the rest of her life.

Historical Context

"The Cry of the Children" was published just a few years into what is considered the Victorian era in England, a period that lasted from 1837 to 1901. Named after Queen Victoria, who ruled Great Britain's ever-expanding empire during this time, it was a historical period marked by enormous change.

Britain's way of life, once based on the ownership or cultivation of land, shifted to a modern urban economy based in trade and manufacturing. The invention of the steam engine resulted in new infrastructure like railroads, steamships, and factories. The telegraph and photograph were both invented in this era. Walter Besant, a late Victorian novelist, once observed that the era had "so completely changed the mind and habits of the ordinary Englishman, that he would not, could he see him, recognize his own grandfather."

Indeed, England was the first country in the world to undergo an Industrial Revolution, and the transformation was often chaotic and painful. Social problems, like the child labor decried in "The Cry of the Children," flourished as a result of rapid and unregulated industrialization. At the same time, the nation also became incredibly wealthy, dominating world markets and affairs, as well as colonizing more than a quarter of all land on earth. Near the end of Queen Victoria's reign, one out of every four people in the world were her subjects.

"The Cry of the Children" was written in the early and fractious years of the Victorian era, shortly after Barrett Browning read official parliamentary reports documenting the horrific conditions of child labor in British mines and factories. The poem explicitly condemns child labor as a practice, speaking directly to some of the most hot-button issues of the day. It was first published in the August 1843 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh, a magazine which enjoyed a large and (unusually, given Barrett Browning's work and politics) conservative readership. Nevertheless, this conservative audience was generally opposed to factories and mines and strongly in favor of traditional agriculture, which made them a ripe audience for the political opinions in "The Cry of the Children."

Though criticized at the time for its sentimentality, the poem was also an immensely popular success, and has been credited with rousing greater public support for child labor reform. Indeed, within 10 years of the poem's publication, legislation passed restricting the employment of children in mines and factories.

More “The Cry of the Children” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Out Load — Listen to the poem read aloud by Christie Nowak for LibriVox.

  • More About Elizabeth Barrett Browning — A biography of the poet at the Poetry Foundation.

  • Social and Political Issues in Barrett Browning's Poetry — An article at the British Library on the social and political issues that fed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work.

  • "Cry of the Children" Exhibition — An academic virtual exhibition on "The Cry of the Children," in honor of its 175th anniversary.

  • More on Child Labor — An encyclopedia article on child labor during the British Industrial Revolution.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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