My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold

                        

                        My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold

                                                                                     By William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Summary

The speaker is telling us about the feeling he gets, has always gotten, and will always get when he sees a rainbow in the sky: his heart rejoices. He says that if he were ever to stop feeling this joy, he'd want to die.He presents the paradox (contradictory statement) that the child is the father of the man. In other words, our adult selves still contain the kernel of our childhood selves. He wants his days to be, perhaps, like the days of a child, filled with—and tied together by—a reverence for nature.

Line 1

My heart leaps up when I behold

• Officially, this poem is untitled, and so this is just the first line of the poem, not the title. But it is important in setting up the rest of the poem. 

• Basically, the line shows us that the poem is going to be about something that makes the speaker's heart leap up, presumably from joy. It's common to say "my heart leaps," but think about this expression. The heart has no legs. This makes it hard for it to literally leap on its own, so this is an example of personification. We can infer that the heart will "leap," even if the speaker is otherwise depressed. Perhaps he actually feels a kind of jolt in his chest. 
• We won't know why the speaker's heart is leaping up until we get to the next line. The suspense is killing us! For now, though, this line break helps with the rhythm of the poem and keeps us readers on our toes (for more on rhythm, go check out "Form and Meter"). 
• Keep in mind that "behold" means to see or observe something, not to hold it. Behold is a pretty majestic word, so we suspect we're being set up for a majestic sight…

Line 2 

A rainbow in the sky:

We find out what makes the speaker's heart leap up: a rainbow. Because of the strategic line break, and the indentation, our hearts leap a little bit when we read this line too—or at least our eyes do. 

• When you read this line, picture the last time you saw a rainbow and think about how it made you feel. Was it like this guy? 
• Note that the line ends with a colon. This means that what follows is probably related to it. Let's check it out…

Line 3

So was it when my life began; 

• This line and the next few after it create a sense of time in the poem. Here we learn that the speaker has had this feeling about rainbows ever since his life began, which we take to mean his childhood, when he was just a wee tyke.

Line 4

So is it now I am a man; 

• This line continues the thought from the line before. Now we learn that the speaker still gets excited by the sight of a rainbow, even as a mature adult. We understand that the speaker is reflecting as an adult, but really, he's just a kid at heart.

Lines 5-6

So be it when I shall grow old,
   Or let me die!

• So we've heard about the thrill of rainbows in the speaker's past and present. Now we hear about the future. The speaker is sure that when he grows old, he will still be thrilled at the sight of a rainbow. 
• Then we get an indented line again, and we encounter a bit of a pause, at least visually. At the end of this pause, the speaker lets us know that he is so thrilled by rainbows that, if he ever lost this thrill, he would want to die. Intense. 
• Whom is he talking to here, though, when he says "let me die"? God? The Grim Reaper? Whomever he's addressing, they're not around in the poem. This kind of address to an absent or abstract audience is what's called in the biz an apostrophe. 
• This line is even followed by an exclamation point, so the speaker clearly wants to emphasize it! For him, life without the capacity to appreciate nature's beauty would not be worth living.

Line 7

The Child is father of the Man; 

• Famous line alert! Here we move away from talking specifically about the rainbow. This line is an example of a paradox—a contradictory statement. It's definitely a paradox that a child could father a man, right? You'd think it was the other way around. 
• Yet, in the context of this poem, the statement makes sense. The speaker has shown us how important it is that something that thrilled him when he was young continues to thrill him when he grows old. He is saying here that his childhood formed who he is as an adult—his self, as a child, fathered, or gave birth to, his adult self. It seems the speaker treasures the fact that he still has a childlike capacity for wonder.
• Also note the capitalization of the words "Child" and "Man" in this line. This is a way to draw attention to the general truth of the line. It is meant to have a wider meaning than just in the speaker's life. A rainbow brings out the child in all of us.

Lines 8-9

And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

• The speaker now expresses that he hopes nature will tie his days together forever, as we can imagine a child's days would be tied together by playing outside.
• What do we mean by tied together? Well, they would all have the same thing in common. Think about when you went to the same park to play, every day of summer vacation. That experience tied your summer together. Well, here the speaker wants all of his days to feature this same feeling of wonder for the natural world. 
• We suspect that the speaker doesn't mean literal days here, but rather his time on earth—his life. 
• The glue, or rope, between these days is "natural piety." There are a few different ways to interpret this phrase. Piety normally has a religious connotation.
• Someone who follows the laws of their religion and is very devoted to God would be called pious. So we might interpret "natural piety" as a religion that is natural, or not forced. 
• But there's not really much else about religion in this poem, so that interpretation seems a little off. What if "natural" referred not to something being genuine and sincere, but to the object of the piety? We think the speaker wants his days to be tied together by reverence and piety toward the natural world, rather than toward religion. 
• These two lines sort of put the rest of the poem in context. The rainbow, which thrills the speaker throughout his life, is an example of a form of natural piety, his sense of joy and wonder at the natural world. That sense is what he hopes to experience for the rest of his days, his time on earth.

Analysis

Nature Imagery

Symbol Analysis

The speaker loves nature a bunch. Like, a whole bunch. He loves it so much, in fact, that he expresses a wish to die if he is no longer thrilled at the sight of a rainbow. While he's still alive, he wants nature in his life, every day. It's possible that he even sees nature as a form of religion or spirituality.

• Lines 1-2: These lines introduce the joy the speaker feels at seeing a rainbow. The first line is an example of personification: hearts don't leap, people do. This personification gives us an image of the heart's jubilation at the sight of the rainbow. 
• Lines 3-6: These lines address human nature and the slow changes from birth to death. Here, the natural world acts as a constant amid the change of aging. No matter how old our speaker gets, how far in time he moves from his childhood, he'll always carry the joy of nature with him. See more about this under "Age" in our "Symbols, Imagery, and Wordplay" section. 
• Lines 8-9: The idea of nature as a form of spirituality or religion is introduced in these lines. Nature is more than just our undeveloped surroundings now. It's a source of spiritual fulfillment for our speaker.

Age Imagery

Symbol Analysis

This poem covers the range of human life, from childhood, to adulthood, to old age and death. It stresses the influence of childhood throughout life, not just until one "matures." The most important part of that childhood influence, for our speaker, is the unbridled joy that a child finds in the natural world.

• Line 3: This line describes the speaker's childhood. It feels a little nostalgic, longing for the past. 
• Line 4: This line establishes constancy from childhood to manhood: the speaker is still enamored of rainbows, just as when he was as a child.
• Line 5: Here we switch from past to future—the speaker hopes to feel the same joy when he's old. Even though a lot may change as he ages, one constant will always be that his heart leaps up at the sight of rainbows. Note that three lines in a row have started with the word "so," which is an example of anaphora, the literary term for multiple lines starting with the same word or phrase. 
• Line 6: The poem touches on the concept of death here. For the speaker, the moment he stops being excited by the sight of rainbows is the moment he's effectively stopped living. 
• Line 7: This line is an example of a paradox, a seemingly contradictory statement that holds a hidden truth. The idea that a child could be father of a man makes no sense, until you think about how every man was once a child, and grew out of this child. Far out, man.
• Lines 8-9: The speaker is asserting that, no matter what else happens, he wishes to have a respect for and admiration of nature every day of his life, no matter his age.

Form and Meter

Iambic Tetrameter…

The technical term for the rhythm of this poem is "iambic tetrameter," but don't get all freaked out by those strange words. An iamb is a two-syllable combination, where an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable. Think of the word "alarm," which is pronounced "uh-LARM." And "tetra-" just means four. So, iambic tetrameter just means that the poem has four beats per line (with a few exceptions), and these beats happen to be arranged in a repeating pattern of iambs, four in (almost) every line. Check out an example of the basic structure, then we'll move on to the variations. Stressed syllables are in bold:

The Child is fa ther of the Man;

If you read that line aloud, you should hear the iambic tetrameter pattern: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. Got it? Great. Now let's complicate things for you.

…with Variations

If you read the whole poem aloud, you should be able to hear those iambic beats fairly clearly, but some irregularities should stand out, too. Two obvious variations on the iambic tetrameter are in lines two and six, which are noticeably shorter than the other lines (and indented, too). They are iambic, with the same stressed pattern, but are in trimeter (line 2) and dimeter (line 6). This means that instead of having four beats, like a line of tetrameter would, they only have three beats for trimeter and two beats for dimeter. Check it out:

A rainbow in the sky:

In this line of iambic trimeter, you should hear three iambs: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. When you read line 6 out loud, you get only two: da-DUM da-DUM.

So, why would Wordsworth vary his iambic meter? Was he bad at poetry? Um, no. Was he bored? Probably not. If you think about it, these changes in the established rhythm stand out to us readers. Therefore, they get special emphasis. In line 2, both the visual indentation on the page, as well as the shift in rhythm, make us really pay attention to that rainbow. And the same can be said for the speaker's "let me die!" plea in line 6. We get a stronger sense of the speaker's emphasis from these variations.

A Pair o' Dactyls

Now that you have that under your belt, let's raise the bar even higher, shall we? There's a slightly trickier variation at the very end of the very last line. This is where the rhythm gets a little complicated. You'll notice that the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables is disturbed by the words "natural piety," which are a little bulky and long to fit into iambic tetrameter. It reads:

natural piety

So, you should hear DUM-da-da DUM-da-da. When you do, you're hearing two dactyls. No, not pterodactyls, two dactyls. What's a dactyl? Well, it's a group of three syllables where the first one is stressed, followed by two unstressed syllables. Unlike every other line, which ended in a stressed syllable, the last line ends more softly with this pattern. It's as though the speaker is at peace with this mention of natural piety. We're left with a rhythmic sense of calm.

Also notice that this poem has a rhyme scheme: the first and fifth line rhyme, the second and sixth line rhyme, and the third, fourth, and seventh lines rhyme. Then the eighth and ninth lines rhyme. These rhymes follow no rigid pattern, but still the presence of these rhymes ties the poem together in a way that's pleasing to the ear. This varying rhyme seems a pretty appropriate choice for a poem that is describing the joys of the natural world, don't you think? We mean, things in nature can be really pretty, but they're not always symmetrical. Does a rose bush follow a set pattern? Not really. It just blooms willy-nilly, the way these rhymes bloom in the poem.

Speaker

Our speaker in "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold" seems like a pretty tranquil, but resolute, guy. He loves nature, always has, and always will. We know that he's male, and an adult, as he refers to being a man "now."

Even though he's a man, our speaker seems pretty connected to his childhood, even saying that "The Child is father of the Man" (7). Think about that for a minute, though. Would this sort of sentiment fly today? Isn't "grow up," something you hear a lot. This speaker is not your typical "man," who has left his childhood far behind and "matured" into adulthood. No, he's still deeply connected to the values of his youth.

Don't mistake this for some early version of Big, though. It's not like the guy has never developed. In fact, he's very aware of the reasons for his connection to his childhood: namely, to stay connected to the awe and wonder that the natural world can provide.

Today, we tend to poo-poo this kind of attitude, or else see it as some sort of joke. But our speaker is not joking here. He's seriously spiritual about being in nature. It's a kind of religious experience for him, and one that he traces back to his earliest years. For him, childhood isn't something to outgrow like a pair of underoos. It's a source of vitality and peace. Kind of makes you wish you were more of a kid, doesn't it?

Setting

Where It All Goes Down

There's one thing we know pretty much right away about the setting of the poem: at least in the speaker's imagination, there's a rainbow. Perhaps it's just rained, the air feels fresh and cool, and the earth is still damp. Imagine the colors up in the sky: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (we still remember ROYGBIV from our childhood, too).

Whatever the case, the setting is important to this poem in a very general way. It's not that our speaker is just a rainbow fanatic. Sure, he thinks rainbows are swell and all, but that's not the only thing we think he's on about here.

Really, the rainbow in this poem is a symbol of the speaker's appreciation for the natural world as a whole. It's a part of nature, but by appreciating it specifically, the speaker is really telling us about his love for all things in nature. That's why we learn in the last line of his "natural piety." He's not just telling us about his rainbow t-shirt collection. He's communicating his love of the whole of the natural world.

It may seem like a broad and useless thing to say that this poem is set "in nature," but really that's the whole key to understanding what Wordsworth's up to here. Nature is the star of this show, and the speaker's relationship with the natural world is what this poem is all about.

Sound Check

When we read this poem aloud, we can almost hear the speaker on one of his long walks through woods and fields, his footsteps beating steadily on the ground to the rhythm of the poem. The air is cool and calm and the birds and bugs are chirping.

The repetition of the structure of lines three through six make us feel comfortable, but keep us moving forward, as if we had plenty of time but were walking at a decent pace. The rhyme has a similar effect: every line features an end rhyme with another (though lines 4 and 7 end in the exact same word, which is a kind of cheating). The use of rhyme creates a sense of sonic harmony, but there are enough different rhymes that we get some variety too.

In a similar way, the poem employs assonance, using rhyming vowel sounds within the lines to create chimes in the ear. For example, we get the long I sound in "sky," "die," "child," and "piety," and the long O sound, which we find in "rainbow" and in the word "so," which is repeated three times. So, it's not just the last word of each line that's tying things all together.

To really get a sense of how the sounds in this poem work together, you've got to read this aloud. Go ahead. Nobody's looking. In addition to fully appreciating the sounds at work here, if you repeat it enough times, you might find that you start to memorize it. Then, the next time you see a rainbow, you'll have a poem on hand for the occasion to impress your friends and neighbors.

What's Up With the Title?

The poem doesn't actually have a title (thanks a bunch, Wordsworth), so we use the first line: "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold." That might explain why the title seems a little long, or somehow incomplete.

Yet this first line-title works pretty well as a title in a way, since it keeps the object of joy open. Of course, as we read the poem, we find out that it's a rainbow that makes the speaker's heart do jumping jacks. When we just read the title, though, it could be anything that has that effect on him—seeing a favorite person or animal, a kiss, or even winning the lottery, for all we know. Though this line is not technically the title, it's important in setting up the rest of the poem. The first six lines all directly refer back to it.

And, while the last three lines are not technically, grammatically connected to the first line, they are also colored by it, too. When we hear the speaker talking about "natural piety," we guess that this "natural piety" explains why his heart is leaping up at the sight of the rainbow (as opposed to some weird medical condition).

Theme of Man and the Natural World

 The speaker of "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold" loves nature so much that he would rather die than lose the capacity to feel joy at the sight of a rainbow. That's some serious love right there. He's loved nature since he was born and wants to keeping loving it until he dies. He views nature as a way to tie together every day of his life in peace and in joy.

'The Child Is Father of the Man’

 A Short Analysis of William Wordsworth’s 

‘My heart leaps up’, sometimes known as ‘The Rainbow’ is perhaps William Wordsworth’s shortest great poem. In just nine lines, Wordsworth expresses a number of the several features of Romanticism: a love of nature, the relationship between the natural world and the individual self, and the importance of childhood in making the poet the man he becomes, memorably expressed by Wordsworth’s statement that ‘The child is father of the man’.

Wordsworth observes a rainbow in the sky and is filled with joy at the sight of a rainbow: a joy that was there when Wordsworth was very young, is still there now he has attained adulthood, and – he trusts – will be with him until the end of his days. If he loses this thrilling sense of wonder, what would be the point of living? In summary, this is the essence of ‘My heart leaps up’.

The paradox of the line ‘The Child is father of the Man’ is that our childhoods shape our adulthood: the inversion of the usual idea of things (that an adult man is a father to his child) neatly embodies Romanticism’s desire to shake up the way we view ourselves, and to (an idea expressed before Romanticism, notably in Henry Vaughan’s fine poem ‘The Retreat’; but it was Wordsworth and the Romantics who made the idea a central part of their worldview). Later in the nineteenth century (Wordsworth’s poem was published in 1807), the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins would take exception to Wordsworth’s insistence that ‘the child is father of the man’.

This is the beginning of the nineteenth-century worship of the child (a form of veneration arguably still with us), which will lead to Victorian literature’s Golden Age of children’s literature and also a shift in the way the concept of ‘childhood’ and ‘the child’ is viewed by society (leading to reforms in child-labour, for instance, some of these changes influenced by literature, such as Kingsley’s The Water-Babies).

‘My heart leaps up’ is a small slice of Romanticism which says more about that movement than many longer poems do. At the other end, we have Wordsworth’s vast autobiographical poem, The Prelude (for which Wordsworth recycled his above lines about the child being father of the man). But another ‘prelude’, almost a manifesto, for Romanticism can be found here in this short rainbow poem.