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.
“Little Ellie sits alone,” she begins, “’mid the beeches of a meadow.” Then she goes on to tell us of her shining hair and face; how she has thrown aside her bonnet, and is dipping her feet into the shallow stream by which she sits. As she rocks herself to and fro she thinks about a swan’s nest she has found among the reeds, with two precious eggs in it; then the vision of a knight, who is to be her lover, rises before her. He is to be a noble man, riding on a red-roan steed shod with silver; he is to kneel at her feet, and she will tell him to rise and go, “put away all wrong,” so that the world may love and fear him. Off he goes; three times he is to send a little foot page to Ellie for words of comfort; the first time she will send him a white rosebud, the second time a glove, and the third time leave to come and claim her love. Then she will show him and him only the swan’s nest among the reeds. Little Ellie gets up, ties on her bonnet, puts on her shoes, and goes home round by the swan’s nest, as she does every day, just to see if there are any more eggs; on she goes, “pushing through the elm-tree copse, winding up the stream, light-hearted.” Then, when she reaches the place, she stops, stoops down, and what does she find? The wild swan had deserted her nest, a rat had gnawed the reeds, and “Ellie went home sad and slow.” If she ever found the lover on the “red-roan steed”—
“Sooth I know not: but I know
She could never show him—never
That swan’s nest among the reeds!”
It was at Florence that Mrs. Browning’s little son was born, “her little Florentine” as she loves to call him; she has drawn us many a picture of him with his blue eyes and amber curls, lit up to golden by the Italian sun.
“My little son, my Florentine,
Sit down beside my knee,”
she begins in one poem, and then she tells him in verse a tale about Florence, and the war in Italy, and when it was over the child had grown very grave. For Mrs. Browning loved Italy with all her heart, and she watched the great struggle for Italian unity, which was going on, very anxiously. From time to time she wrote patriotic poems to encourage the oppressed, and to express her delight at their victories.