I absolutely loved this piece. Wordsworth chronicals the events between a speaker and an eight year old girl. The title is based on her response of how many siblings are in her family.
"Sisters and brothers, little maid,
How many may you be?"
How many seven in all," she said,
And wondering looked at me." (Lines 14 - 16)
The speaker continues to question the girl around where her siblings are:
"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." (Lines 17 - 24)
The little girl explains that two of her siblings are dead and she lives close by them with her mom.
The speaker comes back and says:
"You run about, my little Maid,
Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
They ye are only five. " (Lines 33 - 36)
The speaker is suggesting that the child is not subtracting properly, the math is not adding up.
So he continues to question to child in an effort to get her to recognize her mistake.
Finally, the last verse says:
"Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
And said, "Nay, we are seven!" (Lines 67 - 69)
Wow, what a lesson to learn from a child. It took 69 verses of asking primarily the same question.
Life and family is not based on mathmatics, but on relationships and memories of your loved ones. Its not about the date of our birth or the date of our death; its about the dash in between and how we live it.
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I am so glad one of us liked this poem! I won't lie, it left me a little confused. I thought I was mistaking its simplicity for some symbolism or something that just went over my head. As it turns out that was not the case. Like you said the little girl was right. Memories live on with you. I thought of this when watching the film The Lovely Bones just the other day. No doubt the main character's siblings would always remember her after she died too young. Why should the little girl of this poem be any different?
ReplyDeleteAngela,
ReplyDeleteGood poem to discuss in this post. You select many good passages to quote here, but you don't provide enough discussion of them. Also, you talk at the end of a lesson learned, but certainly the adult questioning the little girl has not learned anything. Perhaps the reader has learned something, but you didn't really make that clear if that was your point.
I liked this poem as well because it shows how the innocent child can sometimes make an adult seem as if they have no clue and this is one of the times. It proves that children see what the story appears to be. She was not understanding why the grown up could not realize there were seven. Great selection.
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