CLOSE READING!
What is it, how do I do it, and what is it NOT?
YOUR VOCAB:
DO AND DO NOT
 DO
 DO NOT
 Analytical
 Evaluative
• SPECIFIC EFFECTS!
• Conceptual consequences
of formal features
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“Powerful”
“Effective
“Successful”
“Persuasive”
WHAT IS A “FORMAL
FEATURE”
 Structure of address: who’s speaking? To whom? In what situation?
 Prose?
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Voice? (1st, 2nd, 3rd?)
Word choice, repetitions, syntax?
Subject / Verb / Object: who or what has agency?
Metaphors / Figurative language
 Poetry?
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Rhyme scheme, or none? (WHAT DOES RHYME DO?)
Meter / Rhythm? (WHAT DOES METER DO?)
Stanza form?
Metaphors/figurative language
BUT BEFORE YOU START…
 What is actually, literally, being conveyed in the lines / section you
are analyzing? What is its explicit purpose?
 IN OTHER WORDS: what is the SENSE of the passage?
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?” (“The Cry of the Children,”
Lines 66 – 72)

Barrett Browning also alludes to the genre of pastoral poetry with her usage of nature imagery (“thrushes” and “meadow-
cowslips,” for example) and this extended allusion primarily occurs in the first four lines of the excerpt. Pastoral poetry generally
presents an idealistic image of country life and the language connected with this allusion is generally cheerier than the language
connected to the urban experience and the children. Also, the commands “go out,” “speak out,” “pluck” [cowslips], and “laugh”
are paired with this pastoral imagery, which may suggest the speaker’s belief that happiness for these children may only be
achievable in a countryside setting.

Structurally, the lines I chose to analyze are part of a larger, twelve line stanza and they have alternating pairs of end rhymes.
For example, “city” rhymes with “pretty” and “do” rhymes with “through.” The meter is trochaic as it contains trochees, or a long
or stressed syllable followed by a short or unstressed one. Also, in this particular excerpt, the line length varies anywhere from
seven to twelve syllables, with longer and shorter lines alternating. In fact there is a distinct pattern here. Starting with the first
line, the length alternates between twelve and eleven syllables. However, with the sixth and final line, the length dramatically
changes to seven syllables. This irregularity corresponds specifically with the children’s response and the bleak image of the mine
and the weeds.
“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 sink in man’s despair without it’s calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm:”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Cry of the Children, l.139-144
Amid the religious references, Browning includes a very potent historical one. The speaker calls the children
slaves in an era where the abolition of slavery is still fresh. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in the
1830s, and Browning writes in the 1850s. Although slavery has officially been abolished for twenty years, the
children are reduced to working in a state comparable to slavery. Now the children are the slaves upon which the
British Empire grows and pushes itself upward.
This idea of the children being pushed down is present within the eleventh stanza through the words
“they sink” and the removal of “they” at the beginning of the last two lines. The children are described
as“sinking” into “man’s despair”, a sharp deflection from the general acceptance of a rising improving Britain.
The speaker makes the audience question, what is the force that pushes the children down? What is causing the
children to sink? The children become associated with attributes of man, grief and despair, not through an
increase in experience or a rising understanding of the world but through a downward plight that strips them of
their innocence. Besides a loss of innocence, the children become stripped of any form of identity. The first
three complete lines begin with “they”, a removal of individual identity into a group collectively separate from
the audience. In the fifth and sixth lines, the children are stripped of even this collective identity; they simply
“are”. The removal of their personified existence suggests a further level of degradation and represents another
shift to the margins where the children’s cries remain unheard.
“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?”
In addition, the use of enjambment between the fifth and sixth lines of the passage provides a
juxtaposition between the ideal and the real, an abrupt break that separates the idyllic meadow from the
reality of the lives of the children. Before the fifth line enjambment, the syllabic breakdown of the six
lines was 12, 11, 12, 11, 12 and the rhyme scheme was a consistent ABABA. The sixth and final line of
the passage, however, interrupts this pattern and has only seven syllables and a rhyme scheme
categorization of C rather than B. Clearly, the use of enjambment by Barrett Browning signals a
cessation of regular rhyme and meter and symbolizes a break in the fanciful description of the world
beyond the mines. The language is no longer flowery, no extra syllables are being added, and there is
certainly no joyous meditating on the nature around them. All that remains is the terse, unornamented
final line of the stanza and the bleak, unkempt world around the mine (62).