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,          5                               
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.

 

Analysis

 

The title of the poem under analysis is “the rainbow”. It doesn’t create a lot of expectations and the reader can make only a few hypothesis about the content: so far, the reader only knows that the rainbow will be the focus of the poem. The reader may ask himself why is the rainbow that important. A rainbow is a natural phenomenon due to the sunlight crossing water droplets in the atmosphere: it creates a visual effect that may bring pleasure to people who looks at it. Moreover, a rainbow is supposed to appear immediately after rain as a sign that the weather is improving, which also may delight people. The poem will probably deal with positive and personal feelings, for example happiness or joy.

In addition, the article used in the title is a clue that may help the reader to find out why the rainbow is the focus of the poem. “The” is a defined article and it suggests that the poem might be about a specific rainbow (or about a specific situation/event that included a rainbow). But the previous hypothesis also suggests that “the” rainbow is linked to personal feelings: they can be put together in the form of a memory. Memories may also be the reason why the poem was written.

So, from the title the reader only understands that the poem will somehow deal with happy memories, but since it doesn’t provide any other information, the reader may be curious to read the poem to find out what it is about.

         Considering the layout, the reader finds out that the poem hasn’t a specific structure (ballad, sonnet, etc.). It is arranged into four stanzas of different length, except for the first and the third stanza, each one made of two lines. This creates a parallelism and it also may represent a link between the two stanzas.

         The text is narrated by a first person speaking voice. The use of the first person may have been done on purpose by the poet, in order to draw the reader’s attention on the narrator’s emotions and also to involve him and pass down him his feelings.

The first stanza consists of a single statement: the speaking voice says that whenever he looks at the rainbow, his heart leaps up. The use of simple present implies the frequency of this event in the narrator’s life, but he doesn’t explain why it happens. In the two lines there is no use of punctuation (it emphasizes the statement), except for colon: colon creates an expectation and increases the reader’s curiosity; in this case, the reader supposes that the following stanza may contain an explanation about the narrator’s reaction to rainbows.

         The second stanza is a quatrain where the narrator focuses on the frequency of the event. The speaking voice says that his reaction to rainbows has been the same since he was a child. Both continuation and frequency of his amazement are underlined by the anaphoric repetition of the word “so” in the first three lines. The narrator hopes that his reaction will be the same also in the future and, if not, he’d rather die. The narrator’s will to end his life in the second mentioned case is conveyed in the text with line 6, the last one of the quatrain: it is shorter than the other ones, which recalls the shorter duration of the narrator’s life, in case he loses his amazement to rainbows. Moreover, the word “so” isn’t repeated in this line, which also creates an interruption and breaks the continuation/frequency.

The reader understands that astonishment and amazement due to rainbows are basic to the narrator. The narrator still hasn’t explained why it is so important and the reader may pose some questions and make more hypothesis. A rainbow is a natural event and it is quite common in everyday’s life. A child’s amazement towards a rainbow is justifiable, because children may not know why a rainbow appears. The narrator’s reaction to rainbow, even though he’s an adult, is a sign that may help the reader to deduce that there is another deeper meaning behind amazement, which allows the narrator to live. Maybe the answer can be found in the next stanza.

The third stanza consist of two lines, as already said, divided by punctuation. The speaking voice makes a statement in the first line: the combination of words suggest the reader that it is a paradox, because, obviously, a child cannot be a father of a man, so the reader has to find out the actual meaning. The clue is given by the word “Child”, which starts with a capital letter. It means that the word “Child” stands for something else: considering the content of the last stanza, the most probable theory is that “Child” refers to the narrator’s childhood and to his feelings of amazement. The meaning behind the paradox hints the above mentioned continuation of the narrator’s feelings in his childhood: it means amazement must be a point of reference to the narrator’s life. Children’s lower knowledge and culture raises their curiosity and eagerness, that move them to examine and discover how everything works. So, the narrator wants not to lose this quality that allows him to be in contact with the world.

The second part of the stanza (line 8) consists of a sentence, which is divided into two parts and the second one is the last stanza/line of the poem. This sentence confirms the previous hypothesis (the meaning behind the paradox) and it recalls the content of the quatrain. To put it simply, the function of lines 8 – 9 is to summarize the content of the previous stanzas and to give the reader an answer to the opening question.

Considering conjectures made from the layout, the connection between the first and the third stanza, due to their length, also recalls a connection on the level of the content. The first stanza introduces the main problem to the reader; the connection between the two stanzas links the reader straight to the stanza which contains the answer, which is also the message of the poem.

         The message the poet wants to convey the reader is not to let prevail rationality at the expense of curiosity, because it is the only thing that allows people to keep a contact with reality.