Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Browning Pages1 2 3

The Cry of the Children

    Alas, alas! my children, why do you look upon me?
                           --the Medea of Euripedes

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!
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 tomorrow
      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 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 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;
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary --
      Our grave-rest is very far to seek;
Ask the aged 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.
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.
It is good when it happens," say the children,
      "That we die before our time."

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.
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 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;
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;
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' (breaking out in a mad moaning),
      'Stop! be silent for today!' "

Aye, 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;
Let them prove their living 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.

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 --
Is it likely God with angels shining 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.
'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, wheellike, 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."
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.

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 sing in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, with the liberty of 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!

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

Change Upon Change

Five months ago the stream did flow,
        The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
        Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
        For if I do not hear thy foot,
        The frozen river is as mute,
        The flowers have dried down to the root:
        And why, since these be changed since May,
      Shouldst thou change less than they.

And slow, slow as the winter snow
        The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my poor cheeks, five months ago
Set blushing at thy praises so,
        Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go!
        For if my face is turned too pale,
        It was thine oath that first did fail, --
        It was thy love proved false and frail, --
        And why, since these be changed enow,
      Should I change less than thou.

A Musical Instrument

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
        Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
        With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
        From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
        Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan
        While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
        To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
        (How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
        In holes, as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan
        (Laughed while he sat by the river),
"The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed."
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
        He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
        Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
        Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
        To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, --
For the reed which grows nevermore again
        As a reed with the reeds in the river.

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point

I.
I STAND on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee,
Where exile turned to ancestor,
And God was thanked for liberty.
I have run through the night, my skin is as dark,
I bend my knee down on this mark . . .
I look on the sky and the sea.

II.
O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!
I see you come out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew. . .
And round me and round me ye go!
O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe.

III.
And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where I knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar;
And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.

IV.
I am black, I am black;
And yet God made me, they say.
But if He did so, smiling back
He must have cast His work away
Under the feet of His white creatures,
With a look of scorn,--that the dusky features
Might be trodden again to clay.

V.
And yet He has made dark things
To be glad and merry as light.
There's a little dark bird sits and sings;
There's a dark stream ripples out of sight;
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,
And the sweetest stars are made to pass
O'er the face of the darkest night.

VI.
But we who are dark, we are dark!
Ah, God, we have no stars!
About our souls in care and cark
Our blackness shuts like prison bars:
The poor souls crouch so far behind,
That never a comfort can they find
By reaching through the prison-bars.

VII.
Indeed, we live beneath the sky, . . .
That great smooth Hand of God, stretched out
On all His children fatherly,
To bless them from the fear and doubt,
Which would be, if, from this low place,
All opened straight up to His face
Into the grand eternity.

VIII.
And still God's sunshine and His frost,
They make us hot, they make us cold,
As if we were not black and lost:
And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold,
Do fear and take us for very men!
Could the weep-poor-will or the cat of the glen
Look into my eyes and be bold?

IX.
I am black, I am black!--
But, once, I laughed in girlish glee;
For one of my colour stood in the track
Where the drivers drove, and looked at me--
And tender and full was the look he gave:
Could a slave look so at another slave?--
I look at the sky and the sea.

X.
And from that hour our spirits grew
As free as if unsold, unbought:
Oh, strong enough, since we were two
To conquer the world, we thought!
The drivers drove us day by day;
We did not mind, we went one way,
And no better a liberty sought.

XI.
In the sunny ground between the canes,
He said "I love you" as he passed:
When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,
I heard how he vowed it fast:
While others shook, he smiled in the hut
As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut,
Through the roar of the hurricanes.

XII.
I sang his name instead of a song;
Over and over I sang his name--
Upward and downward I drew it along
My various notes; the same, the same!
I sang it low, that the slave-girls near
Might never guess from aught they could hear,
It was only a name.

XIII.
I look on the sky and the sea--
We were two to love, and two to pray,--
Yes, two, O God, who cried to Thee,
Though nothing didst Thou say.
Coldly Thou sat'st behind the sun!
And now I cry who am but one,
How wilt Thou speak to-day?--

XIV.
We were black, we were black!
We had no claim to love and bliss:
What marvel, if each turned to lack?
They wrung my cold hands out of his,--
They dragged him . . . where ? . . . I crawled to touch
His blood's mark in the dust! . . . not much,
Ye pilgrim-souls, . . . though plain as this!

XV.
Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!
Mere grief's too good for such as I.
So the white men brought the shame ere long
To strangle the sob of my agony.
They would not leave me for my dull
Wet eyes!--it was too merciful
To let me weep pure tears and die.

XVI.
I am black, I am black!--
I wore a child upon my breast
An amulet that hung too slack,
And, in my unrest, could not rest:
Thus we went moaning, child and mother,
One to another, one to another,
Until all ended for the best:

XVII.
For hark ! I will tell you low . . . Iow . . .
I am black, you see,--
And the babe who lay on my bosom so,
Was far too white . . . too white for me;
As white as the ladies who scorned to pray
Beside me at church but yesterday;
Though my tears had washed a place for my knee.

XVIII.
My own, own child! I could not bear
To look in his face, it was so white.
I covered him up with a kerchief there;
I covered his face in close and tight:
And he moaned and struggled, as well might be,
For the white child wanted his liberty--
Ha, ha! he wanted his master right.

XIX.
He moaned and beat with his head and feet,
His little feet that never grew--
He struck them out, as it was meet,
Against my heart to break it through.
I might have sung and made him mild--
But I dared not sing to the white-faced child
The only song I knew.

XX.
I pulled the kerchief very close:
He could not see the sun, I swear,
More, then, alive, than now he does
From between the roots of the mango . . . where
. . . I know where. Close! a child and mother
Do wrong to look at one another,
When one is black and one is fair.

XXI.
Why, in that single glance I had
Of my child's face, . . . I tell you all,
I saw a look that made me mad . . .
The master's look, that used to fall
On my soul like his lash . . . or worse!
And so, to save it from my curse,
I twisted it round in my shawl.

XXII.
And he moaned and trembled from foot to head,
He shivered from head to foot;
Till, after a time, he lay instead
Too suddenly still and mute.
I felt, beside, a stiffening cold, . . .
I dared to lift up just a fold . . .
As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.

XXIII.
But my fruit . . . ha, ha!--there, had been
(I laugh to think on't at this hour! . . .)
Your fine white angels, who have seen
Nearest the secret of God's power, . . .
And plucked my fruit to make them wine,
And sucked the soul of that child of mine,
As the humming-bird sucks the soul of the flower.

XXIV.
Ha, ha, for the trick of the angels white!
They freed the white child's spirit so.
I said not a word, but, day and night,
I carried the body to and fro;
And it lay on my heart like a stone . . . as chill.
--The sun may shine out as much as he will:
I am cold, though it happened a month ago.

XXV.
From the white man's house, and the black man's hut,
I carried the little body on,
The forest's arms did round us shut,
And silence through the trees did run:
They asked no question as I went,--
They stood too high for astonishment,--
They could see God sit on His throne.

XXVI.
My little body, kerchiefed fast,
I bore it on through the forest . . . on:
And when I felt it was tired at last,
I scooped a hole beneath the moon.
Through the forest-tops the angels far,
With a white sharp finger from every star,
Did point and mock at what was done.

XXVII.
Yet when it was all done aright, . . .
Earth, 'twixt me and my baby, strewed,
All, changed to black earth, . . . nothing white, . . .
A dark child in the dark,--ensued
Some comfort, and my heart grew young:
I sate down smiling there and sung
The song I learnt in my maidenhood.

XXVIII.
And thus we two were reconciled,
The white child and black mother, thus:
For, as I sang it, soft and wild
The same song, more melodious,
Rose from the grave whereon I sate!
It was the dead child singing that,
To join the souls of both of us.

XXIX.
I look on the sea and the sky!
Where the pilgrims' ships first anchored lay,
The free sun rideth gloriously;
But the pilgrim-ghosts have slid away
Through the earliest streaks of the morn.
My face is black, but it glares with a scorn
Which they dare not meet by day.

XXX.
Ah!--in their 'stead, their hunter sons!
Ah, ah! they are on me--they hunt in a ring--
Keep off! I brave you all at once--
I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting!
You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think:
Did you never stand still in your triumph, and shrink
From the stroke of her wounded wing?

XXXI.
(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!--)
I wish you, who stand there five a-breast,
Each, for his own wife's joy and gift,
A little corpse as safely at rest
As mine in the mangos!--Yes, but she
May keep live babies on her knee,
And sing the song she liketh best.

XXXll.
I am not mad: I am black.
I see you staring in my face--
I know you, staring, shrinking back--
Ye are born of the Washington-race:
And this land is the free America:
And this mark on my wrist . . . (I prove what I say)
Ropes tied me up here to the flogging-place.

XXXIII.
You think I shrieked then? Not a sound!
I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun.
I only cursed them all around,
As softly as I might have done
My very own child!--From these sands
Up to the mountains, lift your hands,
O slaves, and end what I begun!

XXXIV.
Whips, curses; these must answer those!
For in this UNION, you have set
Two kinds of men in adverse rows,
Each loathing each: and all forget
The seven wounds in Christ's body fair;
While HE sees gaping everywhere
Our countless wounds that pay no debt.

XXXV.
Our wounds are different. Your white men
Are, after all, not gods indeed,
Nor able to make Christs again
Do good with bleeding. We who bleed . . .
(Stand off!) we help not in our loss!
We are too heavy for our cross,
And fall and crush you and your seed.

XXXVI.
I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky:
The clouds are breaking on my brain;
I am floated along, as if I should die
Of liberty's exquisite pain--
In the name of the white child, waiting for me
In the death-dark where we may kiss and agree,
White men, I leave you all curse-free
In my broken heart's disdain!