Rainbow (My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold)

William Wordsworth

            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.

Introduction

You know, little things can mean a lot. They sure do to William Wordsworth. He loves the simple, often-overlooked things about this world: daffodils, rainbows, the sound of an artfully written poem. Like many of his fellow poets in the Romantic movement, Wordsworth treasured life and nature more than just about anything else. Including television. Sheesh.

This love of life and capacity to take pleasure in simple joys—which Wordsworth is more likely to find in a blade of grass than a bank account—comes through like a clap of thunder in this 1807 ditty, "My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold." The speaker uses the image of a rainbow to show that he loves the beautiful small things in nature so much that he would rather die than stop loving them. A day without nature, this poem expresses, is a day not worth living.

And if you know anything about Wordsworth, that sounds just right. In fact, if you don't know anything about Wordsworth, this poem is a great place to start, because it's got his joie de vivre written all over it.

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 leapt," 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.