Hello and welcome to the Discourse. ‘We Are Seven’ is a poem by William Wordsworth that he wrote in 1798. The poem was published in 1798 in Lyrical Ballads, a poetry collection that contains works by Wordsworth and his friend and collaborator Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The poem was republished in 1820 as a broadside or poster titled "The Little Maid and the Gentleman". The poem depicts a general chitchat between a little girl and a grown-up young gentleman. The gentleman asks the young girl about her family. Though two of her siblings are dead, and only four are alive, she insists (over the protests of the man) that she and her brothers and sisters "are seven" in total. The man, however, thinks that they are only five. He thinks that the dead just don't count. The man tries to reason with the young girl ensuing a battle between emotions and logic. The girl informs that she now lives at home alone with her mother, yet, insists that they are seven siblings.
The gentleman and the little maid never reach an agreement and the man realizes that he and the little girl think about death differently. The gentleman wonders if children just might understand the meaning of death way better than we grown-ups do. The poem deals with the themes of the nature of death and the strength of familial bonding.
Structure of We Are Seven:
The poem consists of 69 lines set in 16 quatrains and a final five-line stanza (cinquain). The poem is written in ballad form though it follows the traditional rhyming scheme of ballads ABAB. However, in some instances, the poet used the rhyming scheme of ABCB (in the beginning stanza). The poem predominantly follows the common meter or ballad meter which consists of alternating lines between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. The speaker of the poem is a grown-up gentleman whom the little girl addresses as ‘Sir.’ He is a city dweller though the girl belongs to a rustic rural area. Wordsworth used Anaphora, Consonance, Repetition, Rhetorical Question, Assonance, and Aporia in the poem.
Summary of We Are Seven:
Stanza 1 Lines 1-4
“———A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”
The speaker begins the opening stanza by raising a seemingly simple and abstract rhetorical question: what can a child know about death? He describes the child as very vivacious; the child "lightly draws its breath" and "feels its life in every limb." For the speaker, nothing is more lively and vibrant than this child. The speaker contrasts supposedly adult wisdom with childlike naivete. The speaker assumes the child does not understand death as he does. He uses "simple" and "it" to describe the child, dehumanizing and belittling the little maid, before she is even introduced, which suggests his seeming superiority on account of being grown-up and mature. However, the fact that the poem begins with this question and the ending rhyme of ‘breath’, and ‘death’ suggest that the speaker might be wrong.
The first line contains only four syllables but it begins midway through the line, suggesting that the other four syllables have been omitted. Thus, the stanza follows a ballad meter of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines.
Stanza 2-3 Lines 5 - 12
“I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.”
In these stanzas, the speaker describes an incident when he met an anonymous girl while walking. The "little cottage Girl," who is eight years old, has curly hair. He describes her “clusters” or curls around her head and her very light eyes. The speaker depicts the girl in the poem as part of a simple rustic world, clothed ‘wildly’ as if she doesn’t fully belong to the civilized society of the towns and cities. However, she is ‘very fair’ and beautiful. Her very fair skin also makes the little girl seem innocent (fairness and light are often associated with innocence). The little girl makes the gentleman feel ‘glad’ and he thinks of beginning a conversation.
Stanza 4 Lines 13 – 16
““Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.”
In this stanza, the speaker begins a dialogue with the little maid. He addresses the child as a ‘little maid.’ Maid here doesn’t mean house-helper or servant, rather maid is used to address an unmarried young woman with respect, and little maid suggests she is just a child, eight years old. He asks a rather innocuous question, how many sisters and brothers she has? The little girl looks at the speaker "wondering," and answers ‘seven.’ She might be wondering why this stranger is asking me such a question, or maybe she was wondering what she should answer, but she did answer ‘seven.’
The gentleman asks again,
Stanzas 5-6 Lines 17 - 24
““And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.””
In these stanzas, the poem reaches to its contradiction. As the girl answers that they are seven siblings, the gentleman is intrigued, he finds her alone. So he asks, the girl where her siblings are, and she reiterates, "Seven are we." She's really proud of her six siblings. She informs that her two siblings are in Conway (a town in Wales). Two others are "gone to sea" (perhaps they are sailors or merchants). And then comes the crux of the poem. The little maid says that two of her other siblings, a sister, and a brother of hers, lie in the ‘church-yard,’ which means they are dead. She further informs that she "dwell[s] near" her dead sis and bro, in the church-yard cottage with her mother. The little girl doesn’t overtly show her pain, sadness, or despair, but the gentleman feels for her. He realizes that at such a tender age, the girl has witnessed death and loss. However, that is not his primary contention.
Stanza 7 Lines 25 - 28
““You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.””
The speaker does the math. He wonders, here is the girl, her siblings in Conway, her siblings who are out to sea, and that total comes to… five. "Yet ye are seven!" he exclaims. The speaker apparently doesn’t have the heart to mention the two buried siblings, but he does question how she can claim to belong to a family with seven children when four are away. He asks her, “Sweet maid, how this may be?” This brings the contention of the poem, ‘Do the dead count?’
Stanza 8-9 Lines 29 - 36
“Then did the little Maid reply,
“Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.”
“You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.””
The girl seems resolute and asserts ‘Seven boys and girls are we.’ The girl has no doubts about her number of siblings as she counts the ‘two of us,’ ‘beneath the church-yard tree.’ The gentleman is impressed by the little girl’s assertion but it strikes his ego and he clings to logic. He reasons that the little maid is lively, she runs around. The two of her siblings are laid in the church-yard, they are dead, and hence, he tries to reason that ‘they are only five.’ Logically, he sounds correct, but do the dead don’t count? Aren’t they no longer her siblings just because they are dead? This is the crux of the poem.
Stanza 10-11-12 Lines 37 – 48
““Their graves are green, they may be seen,”
The little Maid replied,
“Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.
“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.”
In these lines, the girl astonishes the speaker. Though little and innocent, she makes it clear that she understands the gentleman’s point of view but asserts that she has a different understanding, and tries to explain it to him in the utmost decent and respectful manner, addressing him ‘Sir.’ She engages in debate while offering her reasons. The graves of her dead brother and sister are ‘green’, implying they are fresh and her siblings have only recently died. She explains how her dead siblings are part of her daily life. They are only "twelve steps" from where she lives with her mom, and they are laid "side by side" Even in death, the siblings are physically close, even closer than the other lively ones in Conway or the ones who are out to sea. She further stresses that though they are dead, she interacts with them, claiming she often knits there and sits on their graves to sing to them. She also tells the gentleman that she often takes her "porringer" (a shallow bowl) out to the churchyard to eat with them. It should be noted that unlike today when we can use the internet, mail, telephones, and smartphones, there was no way for the little girl to interact with her living siblings in those days. While she could feel closeness with those, who recently died and whose graves are still green. They may be dead, but they are very present in her life.
Stanza 13-14-15 Lines 49 – 60
““The first that died was sister Jane;
In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.
“So in the church-yard she was laid;
And, when the grass was dry,
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I.
“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.””
In these lines, the little maid reminisces about her recent past, informing the gentleman that her sister Jane was the one who died first. She might be ill or injured as she kept moaning in her bed and suffered cruel pain. ‘God released her of her pain’ and she died. The girl paints her death as a relief for her sister rather than a gloomy thing for herself. She and her brother John used to play near her grave when the grass was still green. When the winter came, the ground was ‘white with snow’ and the little girl continued playing around her sister’s grave as she ran and slid in the snow. Then John died too. Each new season brings death. It’s worth remembering that life in rural communities was tough in the eighteenth century, with no welfare state and a system of poor relief that was patchy at best. Death was pretty common in those days.
The little girl makes it clear that though her sister was suffering from a long painful illness and her death was a sort of relief to her, John was "forced to go." It sounds like John's death was unexpected. The little maid doesn’t see his death as a release from suffering. He was as playful and healthy as the girl was. These different circumstances of the death of her siblings suggest that she has a pretty deep idea of what death is.
Stanza 16 – 17 Lines 61 – 69
““How many are you, then,” said I,
“If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
“O Master! we are seven.”
“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!””
The gentleman listens to the girl with intent, without interrupting her, which suggests that he is intrigued by her thoughts. Yet he asserts himself to change the little girl’s mind. He questions again, so, if two of you "are in heaven," how many are you all together? The girl feels his frustration but maintains her stance, and exclaims, "O Master! we are seven." The gentleman seems incredulous, he doesn’t stop. He is obviously irritated that the girl did not seem aware of her loss but rather continued to live as if her siblings were simply away for a while. Thus, he asserts ‘but they are dead,’ and repeats, ‘those two are dead!’ He appears cruel, which he is, but his intention is just to make the girl realize that her two siblings are no more. However, he realizes that his seemingly cruel words too are of no use and says that even these exclamations are "throwing words away." The little girl won't listen. The little girl asserting her "will" repeats what she has been saying all poem long: "We are seven!"
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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