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My heart leaps up by William Wordsworth
- 1. My Heart Leaps Up William Wordsworth
- 2. My heart leaps up when I behold
- 3. A rainbow in the sky:
- 4. So was it when my life began;
- 5. So is it now I am a man;
- 6. So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!
- 7. The Child is father of the Man; PARADOX
- 8. And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
Editor's Notes
- Personification-The heart has no legs, makes it hard for it to literally leap on its own.. -behold – the speaker is observing something that makes his heart leaps
- A rainbow -what makes the speaker's heart leap up:
- -creates a sense of time in the poem. -we learn that the speaker has had this feeling about rainbows ever since his life began, which we take to mean his childhood
- -that the speaker still gets excited by the sight of a rainbow, even as a mature adult. -speaker is reflecting as an adult, but really, he's just a kid at heart.
- -we know 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. - if he ever lost this thrill, he would want to die. -apostrophe- addressing to someone who is absent
- -paradox—a contradictory statement. -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. -A rainbow brings out the child in all of us.
- -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. -speaker wants all of his days to feature this same feeling of wonder for the natural world. -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.