William Wordsworth’s lyrical ballad “We Are Seven” addresses the notion of death—more specifically, as seen in the opening stanza, the way in which children, simple and attuned to the feelings of being alive, perceive death. The remainder of the poem, as characteristic of ballads, takes the form of a narrative. The narrator, after posing the initial question, relates his encounter with an eight-year-old girl. Though he only asks to know how many children there are in her family, her answer is so perplexing they engage in philosophical discourse that is deceptively simple and childish.

As children are wont to do, the girl answers freely that there are seven siblings: two in Conway, two at sea, two in the churchyard, and lastly she in the nearby cottage. Acknowledging only the four living children in addition to the girl, the narrator asks how there can be seven siblings. Accordingly, the girl reminds him of the two buried in the churchyard. The narrator goes on to compare her to her dead siblings and corrects her in that, therefore, she is of a family with five children.

The following stanzas comprise nearly half of the poem, twenty-four out of the sixty-nine lines, and in them, the girl provides the narrator with the stories of her brother’s and sister’s deaths. Because they are now buried beside each other a mere twelve or so steps from the cottage in which she lives with their mother, she spends a remarkable amount of time at their graves, sewing, singing to them, and even eating her dinner. Hoping to capitalize on her explicit acceptance that two of her siblings are not in fact alive, the narrator asks her once more how many they are. Not unexpectedly, her answer remains unchanged. Like a debate, the poem concludes with the narrator’s and girl’s closing statements, that the two children are dead and that they are nevertheless seven siblings, respectively.

Despite its deeply philosophical subject matter, the poem is almost lighthearted in nature. This is largely due to Wordsworth’s application of the ballad form: four-line stanzas, the first and third being in iambic tetrameter, the second and fourth in iambic trimeter. What’s more, Wordsworth adopts a rhyme scheme of ABAB rather than the ABCB typical of ballads. As a result, “We Are Seven” is as quick-paced as it is lyrical.

It is worth noting, however, the instance in which the structure of the poem strays from ballad form in the last stanza:
“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!” (Lines 65 – 69)
By changing the pattern in rhymes and allotting himself five lines instead of four for the poem’s conclusion, Wordsworth achieves multiple effects. Foremost, he emphasizes the contrasting views regarding the dead children. The stanza starts with the narrator’s outburst, the only line in the poem that rhymes with no other. And yet the word ‘dead’ is used twice. On the other hand, the stanza (and the ballad itself) ends with the girl’s adamant claim that, regardless, they are seven. Though neither is able to sway the other in opinion, thus making their argument a stalemate, the cottage girl’s having the last word brings together all the issues contained in the poem: death, childhood innocence, and adult anxiety.

In its subsequent editions, the poem also opens in a variation of the ballad form. As Wordsworth recounts in his notes, he’d been concerned with the initial line, eventually doing away with the phrase “dear brother Jim” in the first line of the ballad. The resulting first stanza is then,
A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death? (Lines 1 – 4)
Like that in the final stanza, the emphasis in this revised first stanza is on the supposed simplicity in thought that surely make children incapable of knowing death. Perhaps it is fitting that inconsistencies with a prescribed form occur when the words ‘death’ or ‘dead’ appear in the poem (in the first and last stanzas, respectively), for death is treated as an obscure concept.

Revised or not, the opening stanza plays a role in the narrator and girl’s debate. In his continued arguing with her, the narrator compares the girl to the dead sister and brother, saying, “Your limbs they are alive” in direct reference to the third line (Line 34). The irony, of course, is that the (adult) narrator and girl readily agree on the fact that her sister and brother are dead. It is the ways in which they accept this fact that illuminates a greater inability in adults than in children to admit to the notion of death. The narrator is fixated on the absence (either gone into the ground or into heaven) that comes from death. Conversely, the girl sees her dead siblings as still present.

Although death is a common theme among ballads and Romantic poetry in general, it is far from morbid in “We Are Seven.” Even when the girl describes her siblings’ deaths, her childish directness (or simplicity) makes her take on death seem, paradoxically, more rational and natural than that of the narrator—rational because she indeed manages to find new ways to interact with her buried siblings, natural because death is an inevitable occurrence. It is her presence and her handling of death that lends the poem its whimsical yet evocative qualities. She plays the part of the stranger who, in sharing their stories with the narrator—a motif found in many of Wordsworth’s ballads—reveals a different dimension of existence and of perceiving the abstract and emotional. She represents the link between person and place, adapting to the idea of her siblings becoming a part of the land on which she lives. She embodies Romantic sensuality in her sprightly appearance and her appreciation of natural phenomena. And while the poem gives no conclusive answer, she demonstrates that, even as a child, she knows enough of death to calmly and willingly accept it.

"To Be Is Being," UHM Fall '11