I Am Number 6 Poetry Responce/I Hope your Moving Went Well

Virginia Byde Pacetti
Mrs. Jernigan
AP English IV
28 February 2011
Poetry Response #6
Hartley Coleridge’s poem “To a Deaf and Dumb Little Girl” is not necessarily addressed to a deaf and mute girl, but rather Coleridge comments on the seeming seclusion and isolation he would associate with such an affliction. He wrote this poem as a Petrarchan sonnet, with fourteen lines and a rhyme scheme ABBAACCADEEDFF. Like traditional sonnets most of the lines have 10 syllables, though lines ten and eleven have one and two extra respectively. Though the sonnet consists of only one stanza there exists a definite shift between line eight and nine.
The first octave deals with the separation and loneliness that comes from being an outsider and not being able to readily communicate with those around oneself. To demonstrate this side effect of not being able to hear or speak, Coleridge begins with a simile comparing the child to an island surrounded by a vast “fickle sea,” and highlighting the resulting “privacy.” He then discusses She can watch a dance but never listen to the music to explain that while she is privy to the visually beautiful aspects of life she will always remain oblivious to the auditory wonders. Such explicative and informative information presented at the beginning help to conjure sympathy from the reader for the unknown girl.
The concluding sextet draws attention to her actual actions and abilities. Coleridge describes “All her little being/Concentrated in her solitary seeing,” emphasizing the diminutive stage of life she is at and also the effort she must exert to understand the world. The poem then ends on a happy and understanding note as Coleridge writes he thinks, “God must be with her in her solitude.”