We Are Seven

By William Wordsworth

“We Are Seven” is one of the poems William Wordsworth contributed to

the collection “Lyrical Ballads”. It envisages Wordsworth and Coleridge’s
ideas of what poetry should deal with.
We Are Seven” is a romantic ballad which concerns the simple people’s
unifying vision of life and death.
The first stanza introduces the subject of the poem “What should it know
of death” and at the same time it presents one of the characters “a Simple
Child” (whose presence is a romantic element). The main subject of “Lyrical
Ballads” was represented by the focus on simple, uneducated country people.
As we have mentioned before the first stanza introduces to us the simple
child who, as we shall see is a symbol for innocence and purity. Along the
poem we can notice the use of capitals letter every time when referring to the
little girl: “a simple Child”, “Cottage girl”, “little Maid”, “Sweet Maid” which
is a reason in favour of the fact that she symbolizes the innocence simple
people possess. Another romantic feature of the ballad is that its form is
responsible for the form of the meaning. In the first stanza we have alliteration
in [l], a liquid consonant which here stands for the idea of life. the subject of
the poem is represented by two pairs of contrastive elements: “life” and
“death” on the one hand and “feels” and “knows” on the other hand, the later
showing the two different ways in which life and death are perceived by the
narrator and by the girl. The verb “feels” stands for the girl’s innocence while
the verb “know” stands for the narrator’ s maturity and for the adult world.
In the second stanza the poet gives us a physical description of the young
girl. We are told that she is eight years old, with thick hair and many curls,
description which corresponds to most country girls.

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 In the third stanza the narrator tells us that the beauty of the little girl
makes him “glad” which is another romantic element present in the “Lyrical
Ballads”. The assonance in [єə:] - air, fair and in [ǽ] - woodland, glad, clad
contributes to the very idea of this stanza: the poet’s feeling of being “glad”.
It is to be noticed that we are dealing with open vowels. Once again the form
of the message shapes its meaning.
In the next stanza the “wondering look” sends us again to the innocence
of the girl.
In the next stanza number “seven” appears several times which in some
cultures symbolizes perfection- perfection that is achievable by natural means.
This number appears seven times: once in the title and six times all along the
poem. “Dwell” also appears three times and it shows how the girl perceive
death: she does not see death as an end but as a sort of continuity among the
living. In the tenth stanza the connection between life and death is represented
by the “graves” and their being “green”. That the graves are green it is a
proof strong enough for the girl that her brothers and sisters still exist.
We can notice all along the poem that the narrator keeps making the girl
repeat the counting of her brothers. By doing this the narrator tries to change
her perception of death. As a consequence William Wordsworth’s ballad
shows the corruption that society uses to destroy nature’s innocence. In a way,
the narrator disrupts the joy and happiness of the eight year old girl which are
priceless benefits of one’s childhood. But he does not succeed as the little girl
concludes to his numerous attempts: “Nay, we are seven!”. So the girl teaches
the narrator a lot more than he teaches her. Wordsworth sees that innocence
cannot survive in this world because mankind incessantly tries to destroy it.
But in the end he feels that all his attempts were in vain as “Twas throwing
words away” because the girl won’t listen to him.