The first line was written not by Wordsworth but by his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Originally, the line read, “A little child, dear brother Jem,” which was a reference to their friend James Tobin. The name was altered to Jim in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 so that it rhymed with “limb” in Line 3. However, Wordsworth never liked the line and in the collected edition of his poems in 1815, he shortened it to “—A simple child” (Line 1); he also changed Coleridge’s “little” to “simple”). This accounts for the irregularity of the first stanza among different versions of the poem. 

Stanzas 2 and 3 are devoted to a description of the eight-year-old girl. The first-person adult speaker states that she has thick curly hair and very much belongs to the country environment with her “woodland air” (Line 9) and her clothes that suggest a kind of unspoiled, country look: She is “wildly clad” (Line 10), or wearing clothes that reflect her rural setting. Her beauty gladdens the speaker’s heart, playing into Wordsworth’s frequent theme of the beauty and innocence of childhood. There is something special about this girl that the adult speaker recognizes.

In Stanza 4, the speaker attempts to engage her in conversation, asking her how many brothers and sisters she has.