Elizabeth Barret Brownings the Cry of the Children
Browning used repetition in her poem The Cry of the Children to show the pain, and suffering that children had to go through as they were forced to work. She was in distraught about the sad faces of the children who were forced to work in mines and factories, and decided to make a political point by writing The Cry of the Children against the enslavement of children. She uses repetition to get the thoughts in the mind of the reader to point out the signs in order to stop the enslavement of children. She did a great job in capturing the horrific cruelty of child enslavement, by using a sorrowful theme, and repetition as a literary device to lead to an extraordinary poem. After the exploitation of England enslaving children, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wanted to capture the pain, suffering, and sorrow of the children that were forced to work in the factories and the mines. She asks the question, “Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?” as if to ask them why they hadn’t heard the cries of the children earlier and set out for an investigation. She explains how children should have been living by using animals as examples: “The young birds are chirping in the nest,” represents the children to be safely home, and “The young fawns are playing with the shadows,” represents the children that were to be out playing around with other children. Elizabeth Barrett Browning does this later in the next stanza, but this time she compares the tears that are falling down the children’s cheeks to the sadness that is felt with time that, like sand in an hour glass, slowly drips away till there is no more. She, again, uses other objects to represent how the children were feeling to give an effect that everyone can understand. She uses, “The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago,” to represent the children who cry. This poem helped fuel the indignation felt by the educated public over the revelation of