William Wordsworth- The Rainbow

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 wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

The title suggests a natural element: the reader understands that a semantic field of the poem will be the natural semantic field. The intelligent reader should also wonder why when a rainbow and explain the reason. The condition that must be realised to allow the realisation of a rainbow is that it must have rained, so the sky becomes wet, then the sun crosses the wet sky and create the visual effect of the rainbow. Besides these considerations, the title doesn't create a lot of expectations, indeed the reader will be eager to go on reading.

The poem is arranged into four stanzas of different length. The reader notices a parallelism between the first stanza and  the third one. Indeed both present the same length.

The first stanza refers to the speaking voice's reaction when he look with intensity at a Rainbow. Rainbow is written with a capital letter, this means it is personified . This contributes to underline the Rainbow's power to push the speaking voice "leaps up" his heart. Is interesting analysing the punctuation's function here:  indeed the colon help to explain the reason of the speaking voice's reaction.

In the second stanza is presented the speaking voice's hope to eel the same feelings even when it will be old. The strong hopeful feelings are underlined by the expression of line 6 "or let me die". It is worth noticing that to the first three lines correspond to a specific moment of the speaking voice's life. The first line of the quatrain is dedicated  to the past, when he was a child; the second one refers to the present while the third one refers to the future.

The third stanza begins with a famous paradox, a particular figure of speech that make a statement that is denied by reality. This paradox refers to the Child's purity and innocence.

The last stanza is made of a unique line. The natural piety recalls their easiness to feel good feelings of wonder and joy.

In conclusion, the intelligent reader can feel the intense connection between nature and the speaking voice: even as a grown man he is still amazed by the rainbow.