Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-12-27

Do you hear the children weeping, my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating In the meadows
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west;
But the young. young children, my brothers.!
They weeping bitterly.
They weeping in the playtmc of the others
In the country OF the free
Seldom, perhaps. has the world been
given a more impressive example of a
great mind in a fragile body. soul
which rose superior to all that sought
to cabin and confine 1t, than that Of
fered by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
4 poet whose most exquisite thoughts
were those of love and aspiration, she
could nevertheless sound the trumpet
blast of assault upon vested wrongs
as i'm the stanza directed against child
labor, with which this article is headed.
4 frail woman, condemned by her
father and her physicians to lifelong
invalidism, she had yet the courage to
and the physique to bear a son. Long
as i'm youth she wavered between life
and death. and spent her maidenhood
somed out at last in intellectual and
wifely triumph. f.. C. Stedman, best and
kindliest of American literary critics,
put the substance Of her life into this
poetic smile:
..She was like the .jinsect that weaves
itself .shroud. yet, by, some inward
force, after a .seasorl.. is impelled to
break through it's covering and come
out winged tiger moth. emblem OF
spirituality in its birth. and of passion
,rr,dr 1y-nc
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born
in 1909 her father being a wealthy
West Indian merchant of England. AS
a child she was singularly precocious,
not merely in her early passion for
rhyming, for nearly all children brought
up in bookish atmosphere have that,
but in her taste for studies of the sort
that compel hard work She mastered
Greek early in life. and i'm later years
tells of reading 'the Greek Bible from
Genesis to Malachi and not being
stopped by the Chaldee' Not unnatu-
rally. this hectic activity of mind was
attended by a lassitude of body. Always
she was frail, and her fragility was In
creased when being in residence at the
English resort, Torquay. for her health.
she saw her adored brother drowned
before her eyes. Then for long years
she lived, as Miss Milford tells us.
confined to one large and commodious,
but darkened chamber. admitting only
her own affectiOnate family and Few
devoted friends; reading almost every
book worth reading. in almost every
language. and giving herself heart and
soul to that poetry of which she seemed
born to be the priestess.
Into the solitude of the darkened room.
however, entered Cupid-under the cir
cumstances a most unexpected guest.
The god of poetry invited the winged
god of love. for some verses OF Miss
Rarrett's attracted the attention of
Robert Browning. six years younger
than she but already one of the great
poets of England. He sought her out,
and on his first visit, in the presence
of her nurse, poured out his tale Of
love. He was promptly and naturally
refused-'with all my will. but much
against my heart" as she afterward
wrote. But going away he renewed his
entreaties by letter. 1t was long before
any encouragement was given him. The
woman he sought knew the physical
frailty from which she suffered and
hesitated to shackle the strength and
abridge the liberty of her hero with An
ailing wife. This hesitation she has