Perspective as it relates to Romanticism (We Are Seven)

William Wordsworth's We Are Seven is a very romantic poem that invokes deep philosophical thought about mortality.  This poem is structured like a ballad yet contains several things to set a serious tone within the poem.  Focusing on the first stanza there are quite a few details that convey the whole meaning of the poem.  The very first line "a simple child" gives the reader a sense of curiosity, life, fertility, and pacifism.  This is sharply contradicted by the third line "what should it know of death?"   Not only does this contrast the first line of the poem, but it's also juxtaposition for the B rhyme on line 2 "and feels its life in every breath" So mechanically the poem is contrasting the words in the 2nd line, it is also conflicting with the readers expectations from the previous 3 lines.  In those we get such words as: life, lights, child, and draw are all things that can be perceived as "happy" words that set a light tone.

A good way to take in the overall feeling of the poem is to listen to a reading with music by composer Mohammed Fairouz.

Listening to the music "performed" as opposed to just reading it to yourself gives you a different feeling.  Much like Wordsworth, this is a very romantic poem that focuses on something so simple as a dialogue.  On the surface we get a simple banter between an an adult and a child about why she considers her two dead siblings to be alive.   Deep down however, Wordsworth is using the child's innocence to represent the universally polarizing ideologies that reside between the young and old (age and experience coincidence?).  The exterior frustration of the man, is really the fact that the man sees the naivety of the child, because he once was young.