Student Question
Could you critically appreciate the poem "We Are Seven" by William Wordsworth?
Quick answer:
"We Are Seven" by William Wordsworth explores the wisdom of children and the inability of adults to comprehend their perspective. The poem uses simple language and rhyme to highlight a child's view on death. The speaker questions a girl about her siblings, leading to a debate when she includes deceased siblings in her count. Despite the speaker's frustration, the girl confidently maintains her belief, emphasizing the coexistence of life and death through her innocent yet profound perspective.
Several of Wordsworth's poems in the Lyrical Ballads are concerned with the wisdom of children and the failure of adults to understand them. In "We Are Seven," the simplicity of the vocabulary, rhymes, and meter all reinforce the perspective of the child who is described as "simple" in the first line.
The poet begins by asking what a child could know about death. He then makes this general query specific my relating his encounter with a little girl. His question, how many siblings she has, seems merely arbitrary, but when she replies with a response he does not understand, he becomes interested, then rather annoyed, and begins to argue.
The girl seems to be under no illusions about death. She describes how Jane, the first of the children to die, lay moaning in bed:
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
’Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, “Nay, we are seven!”
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