We are Seven
Encyclopedia
"We are Seven" is a poem written by William Wordsworth
and published in his Lyrical Ballads
. It describes a discussion between an adult poetic speaker and a "little cottage girl" about the number of brothers and sisters who dwell with her. The poem turns on the question of whether to count two dead siblings.
and met a little girl who would serve as the model for the little girl in We are Seven. Although there is no documentation on what the little girl actually told him during their conversation, she interested Wordsworth to such an extent that he wrote:
Wordsworth began to write the poem while working on many other poems modeled on ballad form for a joint poetry collection with Samuel Coleridge. The collection was proposed in March because Wordsworth needed to raise money for a proposed journey to Germany with Coleridge. These poems were included in Lyrical Ballads and A Few Other Poems with a few written by Coleridge. Wordsworth describes the moment of finishing the poem:
The collection, including We are Seven, was accepted by Joseph Cottle
and was soon after published anonymously. In 1820, the poem was republished as a broadside
and titled "The Little Maid and the Gentleman".
Many guidebooks and locals in the city of Conwy
, Wales claim Wordsworth was inspired to write the poem after seeing a gravestone in St Mary and All Saints Church. The gravestone is marked "We are Seven."
The poem begins with the narrator asking:
He transitions to describe a girl whose beauty pleased him:
He begins to question her about her siblings:
He questions her further, asking where they are, and she simply responds that two are in Wales, two are at sea, and two are buried in a churchyard near her home. He is confused by her answer and asks:
She replies:
He questions her further, trying to have her admit that there are only five but she responds:
She then describes how they die, which prompts the narrator to ask:
After the little girl repeats that they were seven in number, the narrator, frustrated, replies:
The poem ends with a divide between the child and the narrator:
points out that there is a subconscious cleaving to an idea in order to escape from a feeling of separation. The little girl in the poem is unable to realize that she is separated from her dead siblings. She is unable to understand death, and she is forever in an imaginative state of being, and nature is interfering to keep the girl from understanding her separation from her siblings. Susan J. Wolfson
emphasized the reducing tone of the questioner, which allows the girl to articulate a more Romantic view of presence.
More recent scholarship, however, focuses on the sociological context for the poem, written the same year that Thomas Malthus
's An Essay on the Principle of Population
was published. Frances Ferguson
argues that the poem stages a debate about personification in language. Hollis Robbins
argues that the questions asked of the little girl follow the census polling forms proposed by John Rickman
in his 1796 census proposal to Parliament. Like Oliver Goldsmith
's "The Deserted Village," Robbins argues, Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” "promotes a traditional link between individuals and the place they were born." Peter DeBolla argues that the poem is irresolvable partly because of the math in the poem—the evenhanded tension between even and odd. Maureen McLane reads the poem in the context of moral philosophy and argues that while the girl and the questioner speak the same language, they have wholly different views time, death, and counting. of John Mahoney argues, "The seemingly silly squabble between adult and child is already a revelation of the early and continuing tension in the poet between the hope for a perpetual bliss and the incursion of a harsh reality."
The poem was set to music by Mohammed Fairouz
.
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
and published in his Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature...
. It describes a discussion between an adult poetic speaker and a "little cottage girl" about the number of brothers and sisters who dwell with her. The poem turns on the question of whether to count two dead siblings.
Background
Wordsworth claimed that the idea for We are Seven came to him while traveling alone across England in October 1793 after becoming separated from his friend, William Calvert. This solitude with nature he claimed encouraged him to reach a deeper understanding where the experience was no longer just for pleasure, as it was in his earlier days, but also hinted at a darker side. Immersed in these feelings, Wordsworth came to Goodrich CastleGoodrich Castle
Goodrich Castle is a now ruinous Norman medieval castle situated to the north of the village of Goodrich in Herefordshire, England, controlling a key location between Monmouth and Ross-on-Wye...
and met a little girl who would serve as the model for the little girl in We are Seven. Although there is no documentation on what the little girl actually told him during their conversation, she interested Wordsworth to such an extent that he wrote:
I have only to add that in the spring of 1841 I revisited Goodrich Castle, not having seen that part of the WyeRiver WyeThe River Wye is the fifth-longest river in the UK and for parts of its length forms part of the border between England and Wales. It is important for nature conservation and recreation.-Description:...
since I met the little Girl there in 1793. It would have given me greater pleasure to have found in the neighbouring hamlet traces of one who had interested me so much; but it was impossible, as unfortunately I did not even know her name.
Wordsworth began to write the poem while working on many other poems modeled on ballad form for a joint poetry collection with Samuel Coleridge. The collection was proposed in March because Wordsworth needed to raise money for a proposed journey to Germany with Coleridge. These poems were included in Lyrical Ballads and A Few Other Poems with a few written by Coleridge. Wordsworth describes the moment of finishing the poem:
My friends will not deem it too trifling to relate that while walking to and fro I composed the last stanza first, having begun with the last line. When it was all but finished, I came in and recited it to Mr. Coleridge and my Sister, and said, 'A prefatory stanza must be added, and I should sit down to our little tea-meal with greater pleasure if my task were finished.' I mentioned in substance what I wished to be expressed, and Coleridge immediately threw off the stanza thus:-
- 'A little child, dear brother Jem,' —
I objected to the rhyme, 'dear brother Jem,' as being ludicrous, but we all enjoyed the joke of hitching-in our friend, James T —'s name, who was familiarly called Jem. He was brother of the dramatist, and this reminds me of an anecdote which it may be worth while here to notice. The said Jem got a sight of the Lyrical Ballads as it was going through the press at Bristol, during which time I was residing in that city. One evening he came to me with a grave face, and said, 'Wordsworth, I have seen the volume that Coleridge and you are about to publish. There is one poem in it which I earnestly entrate you will cancel, for, if published, it will make you ever lastingly ridiculous.' I answered that I felt much obliged by the interest he took in my good name as a writer, and begged to know what was the unfortunate piece he alluded to. He said, 'It is called "We are seven."' Nay! said I, that shall take its chance, however, and he left me in despair.
The collection, including We are Seven, was accepted by Joseph Cottle
Joseph Cottle
Joseph Cottle was a publisher and author.Cottle started business in Bristol. He published the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey on generous terms...
and was soon after published anonymously. In 1820, the poem was republished as a broadside
Broadside (printing)
A broadside is a large sheet of paper printed on one side only. Historically, broadsides were posters, announcing events or proclamations, or simply advertisements...
and titled "The Little Maid and the Gentleman".
Many guidebooks and locals in the city of Conwy
Conwy
Conwy is a walled market town and community in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales. The town, which faces Deganwy across the River Conwy, formerly lay in Gwynedd and prior to that in Caernarfonshire. Conwy has a population of 14,208...
, Wales claim Wordsworth was inspired to write the poem after seeing a gravestone in St Mary and All Saints Church. The gravestone is marked "We are Seven."
The poem
The poem is a dialogue between a narrator who serves as a questioner and a little girl, with part of the evolving first stanza contributed by Coleridge. The poem is written in ballad form.The poem begins with the narrator asking:
- A simple child, dear brother Jim,
- That lightly draws its breath,
- And feels its life in every limb,
- What should it know of death? (lines 1–4)
He transitions to describe a girl whose beauty pleased him:
- She had a rustic, woodland air,
- And she was wildly clad;
- Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
- —Her beauty made me glad. (lines 9–12)
He begins to question her about her siblings:
- "Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
- How many may you be?"
- How many? seven in all," she said,
- And wondering looked at me. (lines 13–16)
He questions her further, asking where they are, and she simply responds that two are in Wales, two are at sea, and two are buried in a churchyard near her home. He is confused by her answer and asks:
- "Yet you are seven; I pray you tell,
- "Sweet Maid, how this may be?" (lines 27–28)
She replies:
- "Seven boys and girls are we;
- "Two of us in the church-yard lie,
- "Beneath the church-yard tree." (lines 30–32)
He questions her further, trying to have her admit that there are only five but she responds:
- "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—
- "I sit and sing to them.
- "And often after sun-set, Sir,
- "When it is light and fair,
- "I take my little porringer,
- "And eat my supper there (lines 36–48)
She then describes how they die, which prompts the narrator to ask:
- "How many are you then," said I,
- "If they two are in Heaven?" (lines 61–62)
After the little girl repeats that they were seven in number, the narrator, frustrated, replies:
- "But they are dead: those two are dead!
- "Their spirits are in Heaven!" (lines 65–66)
The poem ends with a divide between the child and the narrator:
- 'Twas throwing words away: for still
- The little Maid would have her will,
- And said, "Nay, we are seven!" (lines 67–69)
Interpretation and Critical Response
Wordsworth, in his Preface to the 1802 Lyrical Ballads, wrote that the poems exhibit a "power of real and substantial action and suffering" and, in particular to We are Seven, to express "the perplexity and obscurity which in childhood attend our notion of death, or rather our utter inability to admit that notion". Geoffrey HartmanGeoffrey Hartman
Geoffrey H. Hartman is a German-born American literary theorist, sometimes identified with the Yale School of deconstruction, but also has written on a wide range of subjects, and cannot be categorized by a single school or method.-Biography:...
points out that there is a subconscious cleaving to an idea in order to escape from a feeling of separation. The little girl in the poem is unable to realize that she is separated from her dead siblings. She is unable to understand death, and she is forever in an imaginative state of being, and nature is interfering to keep the girl from understanding her separation from her siblings. Susan J. Wolfson
Susan J. Wolfson
Susan J. Wolfson is Professor of English at Princeton University. She taught for 13 years at Rutgers University New Brunswick and received her PhD from University of California, Berkeley. Wolfson's recent books include Frankenstein: Longman Cultural Edition...
emphasized the reducing tone of the questioner, which allows the girl to articulate a more Romantic view of presence.
More recent scholarship, however, focuses on the sociological context for the poem, written the same year that Thomas Malthus
Thomas Malthus
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent....
's An Essay on the Principle of Population
An Essay on the Principle of Population
The book An Essay on the Principle of Population was first published anonymously in 1798 through J. Johnson . The author was soon identified as The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus. While it was not the first book on population, it has been acknowledged as the most influential work of its era...
was published. Frances Ferguson
Frances Ferguson
Frances Ferguson is a literary and cultural theorist who teaches courses in eighteenth and nineteenth century materials and twentieth century literary theory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland...
argues that the poem stages a debate about personification in language. Hollis Robbins
Hollis Robbins
-Career:Robbins is a professor of Humanities at the Peabody Institute and Associate Research Scholar at the Center for Africana Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. She serves as an adviser of the Black Periodical Literature Project at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University and is a...
argues that the questions asked of the little girl follow the census polling forms proposed by John Rickman
John Rickman
John Rickman was an English government official and statistician of the early nineteenth century.He was born in Newburn, Northumberland, son of the Rev Thomas Rickman and educated at Guildford Grammar School, Magdalen Hall, Oxford and Lincoln College, Oxford...
in his 1796 census proposal to Parliament. Like Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
's "The Deserted Village," Robbins argues, Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” "promotes a traditional link between individuals and the place they were born." Peter DeBolla argues that the poem is irresolvable partly because of the math in the poem—the evenhanded tension between even and odd. Maureen McLane reads the poem in the context of moral philosophy and argues that while the girl and the questioner speak the same language, they have wholly different views time, death, and counting. of John Mahoney argues, "The seemingly silly squabble between adult and child is already a revelation of the early and continuing tension in the poet between the hope for a perpetual bliss and the incursion of a harsh reality."
The poem was set to music by Mohammed Fairouz
Mohammed Fairouz
Mohammed Fairouz is an Arab American composer.Having fulfilling many commissions and created a substantial body of frequently performed works, he is considered one of the most sought after composers of the young generation. Fairouz began composing at an early age and studied at the New England...
.