We are Seven
Welcome to another podcast from Poet’s corner. The Romantic Poet, William Wordsworth, captures the simple faith of a child in his moving poem, “We Are Seven.” A little girl of eight is confronted by a cynical adult about the issue of death. The little girl lost her brother and sister. She visits the cemetery regularly. She, of course, knows they are buried in the church yard but does not accept the fact that they no longer exist. The stranger tries to explain to her about the finality of death, but neither can comprehend the others. Linda will read the poem followed by my commentary. The poem is first person point of view told by the philosophical stranger who interviews the little girl.
———A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
Two worlds collide. The adult, though perhaps not without a nebulous faith in God, is distracted by books. He represents those who look to science for answers about death, but the little girl, who knows nothing of science, looks to her heart. She is full of life and innocently assumes that her two siblings who have passed still have life in them. She visits the gravesite as if they are alive, and finds joy in their company. To the stranger the little girls is much like a creature of nature, innocent and charming, but, clueless about reality.
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.
On the one hand, the adult is taken by the beauty of innocence as if she perhaps reminds him of his own youth; on the other hand, the adult, of course, is too sophisticated to accept the idea that family life continues after death. He sees the little girl as superstitious, unschooled and, therefore, unintelligent. He is like the nurse in one of the most famous of Wordsworth’s poems, “Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” In the poem the nurse sees it as her duty to destroy the simple faith of her protégé. In Wordsworth’s words, “The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, and that imperial palace whence he came.”
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
“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.”
The calloused cynic does the math.
“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.”
Rather than mocking the little girl, he is confused at her answer. In fairness to the adult, he is not an atheist. He accepts heaven, but he denies the eternal bonds of family. He denies any communication between the two worlds. Heaven is for him an abstraction, something that exists only after this life. He does not see it as a celestialized version of life on earth. He wants to teach the little girl his version of reality, for he thinks hers is flawed.
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