Poetry

Yey, it's the poetry blog!

​I suspect there will be very little to smile about. But, then, it's always been a terrible world, hasn't it? For some more than others.

The following is an extract from a poem by the Victorian poet, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning. She derived from a wealthy middle-class background. Tortured by ill-health, she was rendered house-bound for much of her life and spent her time writing verse. She sympathized with the plight of the working-class factory children, of whom she writes so touchingly here.
This temporarily veers from my usual focus on working-class women writers; but, at the end of the day, where would we be without the benevolent, altruistic, good-intentioned middle-class reformist.   I will add the other verses shortly. It's long.

‘Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers!
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young hearts 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 from 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.
 
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!
But the young young children, O my brothers!
Do ye 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 faaces,
And their looks are sad to see;
For the man’s grief untimely draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy.
“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary –
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 –
And we young onesstand without, in our bewild’ring,
And the graves are for the old.
 
“True,” say the young children, “it may happen
That we die before our time!
Little Alice dies last year – the grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.
We look’d 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 new smile which has grown within her eyes.
For merry go her moments, lull’d and still’d in
The shroud, by the kirk-chime!
It is good when it happens,” say the children,
“That we die before our time!”
 
Alas, the young 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 your handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty –
Laugh aloud to feel your fingers let them through!
But the children say – “Are cowslips of the meadows
Like the weeds anear the mine?
Leave us quite in the dark of our 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 face, trying to go;
And underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
 
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