They Will Say
They Will Say - meaning Summary
Child Labour's Stolen Childhood
They Will Say condemns industrial urban life that robs children of nature, play and health by forcing them into exploitative labor. The speaker imagines future judgment: the city will be accused of stealing sunlight, dew and carefree days, replacing them with confinement, dust, fatigue and hollow pay. The poem foregrounds injustice and moral responsibility, presenting child labor as a communal failing that produces broken, empty lives for fleeting wages.
Read Complete AnalysesOF my city the worst that men will ever say is this: You took little children away from the sun and the dew, And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky, And the reckless rain; you put them between walls To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages, To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.
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