As a human, one tends to look for an outlet for the emotions they are forced to deal with, from the events that take place within everyday life. Wordsworth is a prime-if not perfect-example of this pattern of behavior. Poetry-the outlet Wordsworth utilized-allowed him to confront some of the unresolved feelings that he had experience when he was a child concerning death. When dealing with painful events he refers back to the feelings that have not yet been addressed fully and tries to confront and overcome them by means of that outlet. The child that is portrayed in "We Are Seven" and the loss of a child to its mother in "The Thorn," represents the death that had occurred within his own family and lack of sense it made to Wordsworth.
In the beginning stanza's of "We Are Seven," Wordsworth describes the beauty of this child that is enchanting the narrator, "A simple child, dear brother Jim, That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?" (1-4) He goes on to say how such a child of this innocence should not know anything of death-something he is most likely directing toward his own experience. As he begins to go into more detail about how two of the siblings are not alive, it can be observed that this young girl of eight did not know of or understand death to its fullest. It is almost as if her ignorance is beautiful to the narrator yet too unrealistic. The narrator argues that they are only five, "You run about my little Maid, Your limbs they are alive; If two are in the churchyard laid, Then ye are only five" (33-36). This argument is almost a desperate cry from Wordsworth because although he understands the young girls" pont of view, he cannot grasp for himself the idea that the death of loved ones does not mean they are truly gone. The girl is showing an unresolved feeling about death which is something Wordsworth encounters with himself and the death of his mother-and later his father-when he was a young boy.
