Return to Nature
--An Analysis of We Are Seven
Abstract: William Wordsworth’s life experience and his changed attitudes towards life and society give a full understanding of various themes of the poem. After analysis of the poet’s life experience, it is not difficult for us to draw a conclusion that Wordsworth naturally forms his special and penetrating view of the nature, children and people from the lower class and other common things. This poem is a typical example in which the little girl is the heroine and her simple words, on the contrary, lead to many deep thoughts about life. Returning to nature and being a part of the nature serves as one of the themes of poem. In the blessing of the nature, human beings’ soul can be elevated to a higher and purer level.
Key words: We Are Seven, nature, child, adult, return
In the poem We are Seven, we can perceive the typical principles used by Wordsworth as against the “decorum” and “poetic diction” claimed by the 18th century’s neo-classicists. In ad
dition to these superficial differences, we also feel a sense intimacy and freedom from the poem. Therefore, it is necessary for us to analyze the poem and the profound backgrounds and meanings of the poem.
Wordsworth was brought up under the tonic of Mother Nature from whom he had learnt a lot about life and who had influenced the little boy’s mind gradually and deeply. His love for nature seemed perpetual as if that was his instinctive quality. In his later life, he gradually “turned conservative and received favors from the great pensions and poet laureateship”(Chen Jia:5). He, as well as Southey and Coleridge, was consistently attacked by Byron as the “Lakers”. Of course, this name came out due to the two revolutions--French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, which brought about great misery to the mass in England and enabled him to see the aristocratic-bourgeois society more clearly. Another important thing is that the wars between France and England caused his emotional dilemma for he fell in love with a French woman; faced with this difficulty and the divided loyalty, he left France, his once beloved country. This emotional breakdown was finally healed with the help of the nature when living along the lake districts. From his life ex
perience, it is not difficult for us to draw a conclusion that Wordsworth naturally forms his special and penetrating view of the nature, children and people from the lower class and other common things.
The poem is a typical example in which the little girl is the heroine and her simple words, on the contrary, lead to many deep thoughts about life. According to Scheler, everyone is essentially bound to some sort of emotion; an individual can recognize his own existence from the emotional experience and things surrounding us can also present themselves to us through human beings’ emotional experience. Likewise, we can find something in common in Wordsworth’s poems. After chewing the poem, we can easily know why children are the fathers of adults as Wordsworth said. Children’s feelings are much closer to the core of the nature and they have more innocent and more holy emotions. That is why Wordsworth exhorted human beings to the nature and keep as a simple and pure state of mind as children do. We all know that “it” refers to things belonging to nature, but in the first stanza, “it” and “its” refer to a simple child whose limbs are supple and who also belongs to the nature and is the embodiment of the nature. Throughout the whole poem, the child is co
nsciously or unconsciously linked with the nature. From the description of the girl’s appearance and dressing, what attracts the poet deeply is the girl’s “rustic, woodland air” and the air, as far as the poet’s concerned, is nowhere to be found in the city life. The conversation between the girl and the adult is presented to us step by step. In this stanza:
“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 words “lie” and “dwell” seem to tell us that her sister and brother are just sleeping there and living not far from them. In the girl’s eyes, the graves are green--the nature’s color and she can still have supper and have fun beside the grave, just like indulging herself in the embrace of the nature. From the kid’s perspective, the sky is “light and fair” even above her sister’s and brother’s graves. We can’t feel a touch of sadness and grief from her words, w
hile what we can receive is her happiness and warmth as if she is explaining again and again to the poet that her sister and brother are not dead, but they are just returning to nature, or lying in the nature, waiting for her to have fun together. The girl’s tone first reveals her wonder and then her unswerving attitudes towards her answer--we are seven. No tears and no sorrow can be found in the answers. Compared with girl’s simplicity and innocence, the adult’s incessant questions of the number of her siblings betray his inner sorrow and pessimistic attitudes towards death. To adults, death is anonymous to life, and sort out his feelingsthe loss is irrevocable. It is worth noting that the girl’s consistent correction of the poet’s wrong addition leads him to the profound understanding of the different views of death between children and adults. This difference eventually unfolds the sharp contrast between life exposed to nature and life exposed to manufactures. Children are the incarnation of Mother Nature, primitive and pure. However, adults are contaminated by city life, hypocritical and selfish. The nature’s and the child’s virtues are impossible to be found in material life where money worship, immorality and ugliness are pervading. Here the poet’s concept of anti-modern is dug out, hence his exhortation of returning to nature.
Returning to nature and being a part of the nature serve as one of the themes of the poem. The standpoint also goes along with Wordsworth’s belief that childhood which is full of fun and delight bears some resemblance to nature or patriarchal and primitive society, the one which is the utopia for Wordsworth in his later years. Human beings are from nature and are finally bound to return to nature. William Wordsworth’s life experience and his changed attitudes towards life and society give us a full understanding of various themes of the poem. In my opinion, returning to nature is one of the deep meanings concluded from the poem. In the blessing of the nature, human beings’ soul can be elevated to a higher and purer level.
Bibliography
[1] 陈嘉(Chen Jia):《英国文学史》, 上海:商务印书馆，1981。
[2] 赵光旭(Zhao Guangxu):《华兹华斯“化身”诗学研究》，上海:上海大学出版社,2010。

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