Browning used politics to inspire her writing. While living in …show more content…
In “The Cry of the Children”, Browning adopts a thirteen-stanza style, predominantly using ten or twelve lines in each stanza. Each stanza has a certain rhyme scheme. For example, stanza one contains a rhyming pattern of ababcdcdefef. This end rhyme creates a cadence and cyclic feeling by using repetition and similar words. Through the use of structure the text places a certain emphasis on the words rather than in a poem lacking structure. For example, Browning always places a question in each stanza, usually at the beginning or end. Browning places these questions to either emphasize or summarize a point. In stanza two the text reads, “Do you question the young children in the sorrow/ Why their tears are falling so?” (Browning 156) Browning asks this question to emphasize how terrible child labors lived. The author continues to comment that the old may weep for their former lives but the young should have nothing to weep about. This style of structure efficiently creates cadence and