Summary

“We Are Seven” begins with the speaker asking what a child, so full of life, should know of death. They then move on to describe an encounter they once had with a young cottage girl. The speaker describes the girl as having a “rustic, woodland air,/ and … wildly clad” (9-10). They ask the young girl how many siblings she has, to which she replies, “seven in all” (15). The speaker then asks her where all of her siblings are. The girl tells the speaker that two of them live in Conway, two are out at sea, and two “in the church-yard lie,” a sister and a brother (21). Meanwhile, she herself lives in a cottage next to the church-yard with her mother.

The speaker asks the girl how there can be seven of them if two lie dead in the church-yard. The girl insists...