![]() ![]() Bateson points out, We are Seven and Anecdote for Fathers are based on "Wordsworth's recollection of his own difficulties in making contact with the alien, if not hostile, world of 'grown-ups' that enables him to present the child's point of view so sympathetically." The view held by Wordsworth in the poem is optimistic, and the narrator's rationalism is slowly undermined throughout the poem. In her ignorance she is happier than the rational narrator and represents Wordsworth's own feelings. However, she reinforces an anti-rationalistic trend in that she instinctively believes in an immortality that is not connected to rationality. She is unable to understand death, and she is forever in an imaginative state of being, and nature is interfering to keep the girl from understanding her separation from her siblings. The little girl in the poem is unable to realize that she is separated from her dead siblings. Geoffrey Hartman points out that there is a subconscious cleaving to an idea in order to escape from a feeling of separation. ![]() Wordsworth, in his Preface to the 1802 Lyrical Ballads, wrote that the poems exhibit a "power of real and substantial action and suffering" and, in particular to We are Seven, to express "the perplexity and obscurity which in childhood attend our notion of death, or rather our utter inability to admit that notion". The poem ends with a divide between the child and the narrator:Īnd said, "Nay, we are seven!" (lines 67–69) "Their spirits are in Heaven!" (lines 65–66) "If they two are in Heaven?" (lines 61–62)Īfter the little girl repeats that they were seven in number, the narrator, frustrated, replies: She then describes how they die, which prompts the narrator to ask: "Twelve steps or more from my mother's door," "Their graves are green, they may be seen," He questions her further, trying to have her admit that there are only five but she merely responds: He is unable to accept neither her view of death nor her continual us of "we" or "us" to describe the relationship between the living and dead children. "Beneath the church-yard tree." (lines 30–32) "Sweet Maid, how this may be?" (lines 27–28) He questions her further, asking where they are, and she simply responds that two are in Wales, two are at sea, and two are buried in a churchyard near her home. However, his admiration is pushed aside as he begins to question her about her siblings:Īnd wondering looked at me. He transitions to describe how he met a pretty girl who was pleasing to him: What should it know of death? (lines 1–4) The poem begins with the narrator asking: The poem relies on aspects of the ballad tradition in its use of a refrain. The poem is a dialogue between a narrator who serves as a questioner and a little girl, with the first stanza contributed by Coleridge. She did not accept his arguments at all insisted that they were seven. The little girlĭid not agree with the poet and claimed that they were seven. She added that she often took her supper there and sang to them in beautiful moonlit nights.The poet told her that if two of them were lying dead in graves then they were only five. She said that their graves were green and she often did her knitting and stitching workīy them. The poet requested her to explain how they were seven while two of them were buried in the graves. She told him that two of them lived at Convay, two had become sailors at the sea and the last two lay buried in the churchyard. He asked the girl how many brothers and sisters they were. The poet was fascinating by her beauty and charm. The poet happened to meet an eight year old cottage girl who had curly hairĪnd beautiful wild eyes. They are too young to understand the bitter difference between life and death. They believe that every object is as alive as they are. The poem believes that children are the best specimens of purity, beauty and innocence. We are Seven" is a beautiful poem composed by the great poet of nature, William Wordsworth The poem expresses Wordsworth's optimistic view of nature and his dissatisfaction with rationality. The girl is unwilling to accept that two of her siblings, deceased, are no longer part of her family. It describes a discussion between older gentlemen who tries to question a girl about her family. We are Seven is a poem written by William Wordsworth in 1798 and published in his Lyrical Ballads. ![]()
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