My Heart Leaps Up by William Wordsworth

Full Text

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.

Overview

A nine-line declaration that the capacity for wonder must persist from childhood through old age — and that losing it would make life not worth living.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-2

The opening is pure Wordsworth: an involuntary physical response ("leaps up") to natural beauty. The rainbow is the trigger, but the real subject is the capacity to be moved.

Lines 3-6

Three temporal stages — childhood, manhood, old age — linked by the repeated "So." The force of "Or let me die!" is striking: Wordsworth would rather not live than lose this responsiveness.

Lines 7-9

"The Child is father of the Man" — the poem's most famous line, a paradox that reverses the expected hierarchy. Childhood wonder teaches and shapes the adult. "Natural piety" means reverence for nature, not religion.

Themes

• Continuity of wonder
• Childhood as spiritual origin
• Nature as sacred
• The passage of time

Literary Devices

Paradox

The Child is father of the Man — Reverses the biological relationship to argue that childhood experience is the origin and authority for adult feeling.

Anaphora

So was it / So is it / So be it — The triple repetition binds past, present, and future into a single emotional continuity.

Hyperbole

Or let me die! — The exclamation elevates the stakes: loss of wonder is equated with death itself.

Historical Context

Wordsworth later used the "Child is father of the Man" line as the epigraph to his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." The poem was composed at Dove Cottage in the Lake District during one of Wordsworth's most productive periods.