We Are Seven

In the opening stanzas the adult man expresses aesthetic appreciation for the eight-year-old girl who lives in the country cottage. He admires her beauty and her “rustic, woodland air” (Line 9). Here, she exists as an object of admiration for him, rather than a person with her own ideas and experiences.

The conflict that reveals the difference between them begins in Stanza 4, when the man asks about her brothers and sisters, “How many may you be?” (Line 14). She replies, “Seven in all” (Line 15), but it soon becomes clear that two of those siblings—a sister and a brother—are dead, and “in the churchyard lie” (Line 21). Naturally enough, the adult is puzzled that the girl insists that there are still seven of them. She does not have a shadow of doubt about this, however, saying it three times within the space of five stanzas (Stanzas 4, 5, and 8). 

Baffled, the speaker tries to explain to her that in fact, she has only five siblings now. He carefully points out the difference between the living and the dead; she is alive (“You run about, my little Maid, / Your limbs they are alive” [Lines 33-34]), in contrast to the two children who lie in their graves.