My Heart Leaps Up- William Wordsworth- Poem Summary

POEM INTRODUCTION:

Wordsworth’s poetry is known for its simplicity. He wrote this poem “My Heart Leaps Up” which is also known as “The Rainbow” in the year 1802 in Dove Cottage, Grasmere while he was with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. It was published in his famous collection, Poems, in Two Volumes in the year 1807. It is said that after this poem Wordsworth began to plan on his popular, Ode: Intimations and Immortality, which is why he used the last three lines from The Rainbow as the epigraph of it.

POEM:

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 poet expresses how he felt when he looked at a rainbow. He says his heart with joy leapt up when his eyes captured the presence of a rainbow in the sky. He says his life began with this wondrous sight. His childhood days were blissful because of it. Still is blissful now and will also in his future. He says if his heart does not feel the same leap that he felt years before, he wishes to die rather than living such an aesthetic less life. He now appreciates ‘the child him’ because his childhood was the teacher who taught to find joy in the beauty of Mother Nature “The Child is father of the Man”. And in the end he registers his wish which is, he wants his each and every day to be connected with purity, by which he says he wants this ability of innocent admiration towards the nuances of nature to remain forever with his lifetime.