Social Awareness In The Cry Of The Children

After listening to the in class discussion and going into small groups about the poem The Cry Of The Children I wanted to go into more detail about the voices of the children act as a social commentary of the time.

                “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”.  The lead up to this is how everything is happy and how the young in the natural world are free and joyous yet the young children who are not in nature are not free and happy but are weeping instead. It seems to me that at the time that this poem was written the social view of children had begun to swing away from them being small adults and actual children. My reason for thinking this is that for Browning to be bemoaning the condition of these children infers that at least some segment of the population would be in agreement with her.

                There was one passage in particular that did show kind of a transition from being young adults into children. In the passage the children say their our fathers but feel do not know the rest. I am not sure which is more oddly cruel, the fact that they only know those two words for the prayer or the fact that they are aware that they do not have all the words necessary for their God to hear them. I think that Browning uses lines like that to paint a looking glass view into the confusion surrounding what society was to expect of and from the young adults.