"The Rainbow" (1802)

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;

I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Analysis

“The Rainbow” is a poem written by William Wordsworth in 1802.

The short title does not create a lot of expectations in the reader. The reader considering it might expect the poem to have a happy content or might expect “the rainbow” to be a recurring image in the poem. The title is short because it provably is a picture of the poem, like a short flash of what the content of the poem is. A rainbow is a meteorological event so it takes place in peculiar conditions: it must have just rained (the sky must be wet) and the sun must shine. The appearance of a rainbow is a rare event. This can be one of the interpretations of the title: the poem starts with the word “rainbow” because a rainbow is an event (that you cannot predict) which brings happiness to the one who looks at it; this is an anticipation of the content of the poem. These are weak conjectures and the title doesn’t create specific expectations so the reader is interested to go on reading in order to know more about the rainbow.

Considering the layout the reader can see that the poem is arranged into four stanzas. The first one and the third one are couplets, the second stanza is a quatrain and the last one is a one line long stanza. The parallelism between the first and the third stanza draws the attention of the reader on the central stanza, the quatrain, and on its content. In addiction the reader must focus on the quatrain because it is the longest stanza. The poem is free rime and only lines three and four rime.

The first stanza is a speaking voice's statement: when he behold at the rainbow his heart starts beating faster and faster. This statement increases the curiosity of the reader who wants to know why the narrator's heart starts leaping when he looks at a rainbow. The use of “behold” instead if “look at” makes the reader know how carefully the narrator uses to look at a rainbow. This lexical choice increases more and more the reader's curiosity. The quatrain seems to be going to explain the reason of the heart leaping: the colon is an evidence of the function of the next stanza.

The quatrain contradict the reader's expectation of an answer and does not satisfy his curiosity. Anyhow the stanza adds more information about the narrator's statement: he's heart leaped when he was a child, his heart leaps now and he hopes it will leap even when he gets old. If this wont happened he would better die. This means that the emotion the speaking voice feels anytime he beholds a rainbow in the sky. In fact this natural occurrence connects human being with nature and this is why the narrator need to feel that way looking at the rainbow. The narrator wants to deeply feel related with nature. Moreover a rainbow comes after the rain and creates happy effects of light and colors which suggest that the weather is improving. If the narrator beholds at a rainbow he knows it's going to be sunny. The presence of the rainbow and the emotions he feels are a permanent feature of narrator's life. They are his life itself and this is why he would better die instead of live without that feels. The next couplet provably will better explain the reason why he would better die without the heart leaping.

The third stanza, a couplet, deeper explains the previous stanza. The paradox “The Child is father of the Man” means that a man is what he is depending on what he was as a child. It is the child a man was which build the man he is now. So the child is the father, the creator of the man. Furthermore it means that if you cannot feel what you felt as a child you're not a man. A mature person must feel surprises and emotions just like he did when he was a child, or he will become insensitive and cold: a dead man. This is why the narrator says he would better die instead of don't feel surprised while looking at the rainbow.

Lines eight and nine (such as third and fourth stanzas) are tied together with a run-on-line. The reader cannot stop until the end of the poem. “I could wish my days to be → Bound each to each by natural piety.” is the final answer of the whole poem. The speaking voice wants to remain in contact with nature. This is why he's contemplating the rainbow and he want to feel emotionally disturbed by its view. The rainbow is a symbol for the whole nature so feeling the rainbow he can feel the nature. The life on the man is deeply tied with nature and cracking this tie means crack a man's life itself.