"The Rainbow" – analysis

Considering the title, the reader can expect the content make happiness, because the rainbow is the symbol of peace, tranquillity and happiness, too.

The conditions for a rainbow to exist are: it must have just rained because, when it happens, the sky is very wet and the sun-rays cross the atmosphere and it creates a visual effect.

The reader considers the title and seems it doesn't create a lot of expectation, so the reader is eager and must read the poem to understand better the title.

The poem is arranget into four stanzas: the first stanza is made up of two lines, the second is a quartet, the third is long as the first one, and the fourth and last stanza is made up of one line.

The function of the first stanza is purely descriptive: the narrative voice tells the reader that, whenever he looks intensely at the rainbow, his heart leaps up.

The narrative voice, in this contest, is not necessary the poet himself.

The quatrain maybe will satisfy the reader's question, about why the poet wrote a poet about the rainbow, because the use of colon is generally used to give answers and information.

In the first lines of the quatrain, the narrative voice expresses his feelings when he looks at the rainbow. The function of the quatrain is to let the reader know this happened before, happens right now and will happen in the future, and he hopes this will go on even he will be old, or he will prefer to die.

The rainbow assumes the metaphor of human life, related to the nature: the rainbow makes the people hope for a better weather at the moment, so they may hope for a better view of life.

After, the sentence "Child is father of the man" is a paradox, because in the human nature first comes the father, then the child. Its function is to highlight the high capacity of children to have feelings: this makes the reader think about human nature: if someone is no more capable to have feelings, he lives in a dry reality, so his heart is dry, too. The message of the whole poem is an invitation to have an emotion response like children do, even when we are young; if we are no more capable to have an emotion response, the narrative voice says he prefers to die.