The rainbow William Wordsworth

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.

From consideration and reflection on the meaning of the title, the reader does not take a lot of information about what is said in the poem. The brevity of the title does not allow the creation of many expectations, but provides only the main topic of which the author will treat: the rainbow. This lack of expectations does not stop the reader to try to understand the tone and the style in which the poem is written. The fact that there is talk of a rainbow makes the reader expect a cheerful tone and a very simple language. The positive nature that the intelligent reader think that the text will have, is due to the definition of rainbow: a visual phenomenon, which marks the end of a storm, consisting in splitting a ray of sunshine in the various components of the light colours, when it passes through the atmosphere moist. This unique expectation increases the curiosity of the reader about the content of the text, prompting him to ask what aspects of the rainbow will be taken into consideration.

The first word of the poem is the possessive "my", so the intelligent reader can easily understand that what is said in the text will cover the moral and personal the narrator, who may or may not coincide with the author himself, but that can only be a means by which he decides to communicate a message. The structure of the poem does not follow a specific pattern and is therefore not attributable to a specific genre. The text consists of four stanzas: the first and the third formed by two lines, the second formed by four verses and the last of a single line. Each stanza plays a definite role in the exposition of the considerations of the speaking eye. The first stanza shows the opinion of the narrator and his reaction of wonder at the sight of a rainbow; this consideration leads to the intelligent reader to ask himself a question: why does the narrator feel happiness and wonder at the sight of a rainbow? The quatrain, as can be imagined from the presence of the colon at the end of the previous stanza, contains the answer to the question that the reader has just thought: the narrative voice feels amazement at the sight of the rainbow because this is the emotion that has always felt, from his birth, and that he hopes to continue to feel in the future, if it does not happen he would prefer death. The reason why the protagonist feels this attachment to his emotional reaction is shown in the last two sequences that, joined by a run-on-line, report the message that the author wants to convey through poetry. The paradox "The Child is father of the man" means that the sensitivity can only be preserved through the conservation, in adulthood, of the instinctive reactions that characterize the children’s life. The message contained in the text is, in fact, that the humanity of a person comes from the ability to have a direct contact with nature, a capacity that you must try to keep even opposing the right. The listening just leads of the intellect, if not accompanied by instinctive feelings, the coldness and the loss of contact with nature.

The length of the stanzas creates a link between the first and the third, both having two lines, combining the initial exposure to the statement of the central theme of the poem. The argument generally exhibited by the narrative voice is then summarized in the union of the introduction and the conclusion, fixing the message in the mind of the reader.

The memory and the hope of the narrator, presented in the quatrain, are instead highlighted by the repetition of "so" at the beginning of the first three verses, divided by the same figure of speech from the fourth. The latter, however, contains the dramatic expression "or let me die", emphasized by the use of the exclamation mark, referring to the importance that the narrator attributes to the repetition of the reaction of astonishment, at the sight of the rainbow, in his future. In the third stanza, however, the word "Child" written with a capital letter, brings to the foreground the natural environment in which the reaction of astonishment takes place: when you're a kid. Another figure of speech, the alliteration of the consonant "y", creates coherence and cohesion in the text by combining together all the parts of speech and makes information more immediate and easier to remember for the one who reads.