The poet who, it may be felt, lies behind most of these poems has, so far, virtually not been mentioned. All these poets were steeped in Wordsworth, who more than anyone introduced children into English poetry and whose poems are full of dead children.
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The most conventional of these poems is probably "The Childless Father," an account of how Timothy adjusts to his daughter's death, concluding with a sentimental glimpse of the tear on the old man's cheek. Its final stanza actualizes the fact of her death by opening with an everyday detail:
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 | | Perhaps to himself at that moment he said
"The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead."
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Timothy resumes his life by joining in the village hunt, and speaks "not a word" of Ellen's death. Acceptance is the theme of this poem, as it is of the others Wordsworth wrote on the subject. In "The Two April Mornings," Matthew remembers how he accepted his daughter's death at the moment when, turning from her grave, he met "A blooming girl, whose hair was wet, / With points of morning dew:
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| | There came from me a sigh of pain
Which I could ill confine;
I looked at her, and looked again:
And did not wish her mine!
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In "We are Seven," the best known of the group, the poet attempts in vain to persuade the little cottage girl that there is a difference between the brothers and sisters who dwell at Conway or have gone to sea, and those who "in the churchyard lie," but the child, with splendid obstinacy, refuses to accept this:
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| | "But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!"
Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will
And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
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