Learning from a Child: the "Experiemental" Poetry of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth’s short poem “We Are Seven,” composed from a trifling meeting with one hardly significant young girl, well represents the ideals of the Romantic period that Wordsworth himself assisted in inaugurating. Even the subject matter itself rings of Romantic ideals: Wordsworth writes of “[a] simple child,” nothing more or less (line 1). The Romantics railed against industrialism and urban sprawl, necessarily focusing on the individual to advance their theoretical purposes. Wordsworth contains his views on life, death, and even God within this single poem: a poem simple in rhyme and meter, small in scope, and not terribly significant in subject matter.

Wordsworth clearly relies upon Biblical number symbolism in the writing of his poem. Six tends to represent sinfulness, or the best that man (or another created being; hence, why Satan’s number is 666) can do on his own, while seven always refers to the perfection of God and what man can accomplish by relying solely on God. The child in the poem has six siblings, divided into pairs: “‘two of us at Conway dwell, / And two are gone to sea. / Two of us in the church-yard lie,’” she tells the speaker (lines 19-21). Without her, the children make six: two at Conway, two at sea, two dead. Neither speaker nor readers meet any of these siblings, so no-one receives any revelation or enlightenment from their existence. This seventh girl—symbolic of God’s perfection—is the one who makes meaning of the rest. This little eight-year-old, who “[has] a rustic, woodland air” (line 9) about her seems simple, but it is she who becomes the teacher. She, though young and apparently unworthy, teaches a nonbeliever about life and death, an occupation strikingly similar to that of Jesus, the poor carpenter’s son who, at a similar age, was found in the temple preaching about life and death. Implicitly, then, the reader comes to trust the wisdom of this little girl, because the girl is compared in the purest way to God’s own wisdom and perfection. Romantics, who could be critical of the organized church, are likely to see more of God in the faith of a little girl than in the pomp and splendor of the Church. Wordsworth imbues this young “cottage girl” (line 5) with the authority necessary to disperse wisdom on life and death.

Death, then, is not the end of anything. This little girl loves her siblings who have died as much as she did when they lived; in fact, she treats them much the same, sitting near the spots where they are buried, she “[sits] and [sings] to them” (line 44). Though the speaker of the poem protests much, arguing, “‘But they are dead; those two are dead! / Their spirits are in heaven,” so their sister must no longer count them among her siblings, the girl will not be swayed (lines 65-66). The girl is kind but persistent, and the speaker ends with this image of her: “The little Maid would have her will, / And said, ‘Nay, we are seven!’” (lines 68-69). Though death may be the end for the speaker—implied to be well into adulthood, by the opening four lines fondly and distantly describing youth—such is not the case for this wise young girl. Life is comprised of so much more than merely walking upon the surface of the earth: life is all around, and the faithful can find companionship in lifeless bodies just as much as in boys and girls who run and play.

As brilliant with wordplay as he is with the play of ideas, Wordsworth chose to write his last stanza—only one of seventeen stanzas in “We Are Seven”—with five lines instead of four. While each previous stanza contains the simple rhyme scheme of ABAB, this final stanza displays the rhyme scheme ABCCB. One line in the entirety of the poem, one line out of 69 lines, has no partner: the already-quoted line “‘But they are dead; those two are dead!’” (line 65). This line was not meant to have a companion line to validate its existence: though Wordsworth writes as though he were the speaker, his words throughout the poem side with the young girl’s views on life and death, not the speaker’s. This line summarizes the ideas found in the rest of the poem: Wordsworth comments upon an old society that refuses to change its views of life, death, and nature, and a new one, willing to open itself up to a world that defies boundaries.