"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 towards 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." They seem to look up with their "pale and sunken faces," and to cry that the world is _very_ dreary; they take but a few steps, and get so tired, that they long for rest. It is true, they say, sometimes they die very young. There was one--little Alice--died lately; they go and listen by her grave and _she_ never cries; no one calls _her_ up early, saying, "Get up, little Alice; it is day!" time to go off to the droning, droning wheels in the factories, and--"It is good when it happens," say the children, "that we die before our time." It is no good to call them to the fields to play, to gather big bunches of cowslips, to sing out, as the little thrushes do:-- "For oh!" say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run and leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep." For the great wheels never stop; the little heads may burn, the little hearts may ache, till the children long to moan out:-- "O ye wheels--stop--be silent for to-day!" Here were the children in their misery, life-like, only too true and real; and then the poet pleads for them, pleads that they may be taught there _is_ something in life as well as the great grinding wheels; pleads that the lives of the little factory children may be made happier and brighter. And England heard the cry of the children. The following year fresh laws were made about the employment of children in factories; they were not to be allowed to work under the age of eight, and not then unless they were strong and healthy; they were not to work more than six hours and a half a day, and to attend school for three hours. Three years after this poem was written Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, the poet, and together they went off to Italy, where the softer air and mild climate brought back her health for a time. "She is getting better every day," wrote her husband; "stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes." One of Mrs. Browning's happiest poems is the story of little Ellie and the swan's nest.