My Heart Leaps Up

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Memory

Wordsworth depended on memory of past events and experiences to nourish his life as an adult and also to fuel his poetry. Many of these memories were of his childhood and adolescence, when he reveled in exploring England’s Lake District.

In the poem, memory first surfaces in Line 3, “So it was when my life began.” Here, Wordsworth refers to the explosion of joy he felt when he caught sight of a rainbow as a boy. Wordsworth loves that this experience has become much more than a memory. Because he continues to have the same jolt of awe at the sight of rainbows as an adult, he cherishes the connection with his childhood innocence, youthful insight, and uncomplicated awe at the beauties of nature. He values the continuity of the past with the present—so much so that the imagined loss of that continuity of memory prompts him to demand death (“Or let me die!” [Line 6]).

The feeling that the past was somehow always better can be felt in much of Wordsworth’s poetry, even though he also tries hard to convince himself that what he has gained is at least equal to what he has lost. In this poem, memory of the past is reassuring because his present experience as an adult (in this instance, of the rainbow) is just as enriching and joyful as it was when he was much younger. Thus, memory is sweet; the remembered event is not bathed in nostalgia but is part of a continuing stream of life that nourishes the poetic imagination.

Childhood and Nature

Wordsworth was a poet of childhood, who regarded youth as an idyllic time of life and a blessed state of being. Books I and II of his autobiographical poem, The Prelude, provide ample evidence of Wordsworth’s boyish delight as he explored and reveled in the woods, mountains, meadows, and lakes of the Lake District:

Oh! many a time have I, a five years’ Child,

A naked Boy, in one delightful Rill,

A little Mill-race sever’d from his stream,

Made one long bathing of a summer’s day (Wordsworth, William. “From The Prelude: Book 1: Childhood and School-Time.” Poetry Foundation, 1805. Lines 294-97).

In “My Heart Leaps Up,” the expression of joy at the sight of the rainbow thus has its origin in his boyhood experience. However, unlike this passage from The Prelude, which specifically reconstructs Wordsworth’s memory of child adventures outside of time, “My Heart Leaps Up” situates childhood within the normal flow of time, centering it as the anchor of the adult self. The Prelude offers readers a repeated image—“many a time” (Line 294) the speaker stretched “a summer’s day” (Line 297) into a near-infinity. This experience exists only in memory, as there is no suggestion that an adult could recapitulate the same flow state that makes time stop still for a boy. However, “My Heart Leaps Up” shows readers the transitions between boyhood, manhood, and old age, offering the contrasting thought that childhood experiences are necessarily repeatable no matter one’s age or maturity level. Indeed, so crucial is the need that Wordsworth emphasizes his point with parallel grammatical structures:

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old (Lines 3-5).

The repetition of the conjunction “so” accompanied by the verb “to be” in different tenses strikes a biblical chord, echoing similar diction in scripture. Wordsworth is invoking a connection to the divine when he demands to be never severed from his childhood understanding of nature’s awe-inspiring sublimity.

Wordsworth regarded childhood as a visionary state in which the child has a heightened perception of the effulgent splendor of natural objects. The child innocently perceives the glory of nature in a way that many an adult, weighed down by the pressures of the world, might envy. This is what makes the child’s heart leap up, and the adult will do well to emulate him.

Hope

Past, present, and future feature in the poem. The past and the present (Lines 1-4) are known, but the future mentioned in Lines 5-6 is uncertain. Instead of using the indicative mood that describes his joyful response to the rainbow in his childhood and in adulthood, the speaker resorts to the conditional mood to describe his wish for his future. “So be it when I grow old” (Line 5) is a poetic contraction of “so let it be when I grow old”—a turn of phrase that combines hope, fiat, and even a sense of magical spellwork.

The vehemence of the line that follows it (“Or let me die!” [Line 6]) allows the possibility that such continuity from past to present and future is not assured, regardless of the speaker’s hopes for himself. Given the alternative, however, the speaker would rather be dead than experience the kind of break from his past self that Line 6 creates in the poem.

To smooth over the disruption and return to the place of positive wish fulfillment, the poem just as forcefully introduces a new connection between past and present—a biological and thus seemingly undisruptable one. If “[t]he Child is father of the Man” (Line 7), then there is no possibility that the continuity between selves could be severed. No one can undo paternity, which is genetic fact. Thus, hope is transformed into truth: The child’s senses and experiences live on in the man. The poem ends with a wish that uses yet another metaphor of inescapable binding, this time that of a chain of cause and effect: “And I could wish my days to be / Bound each to each by natural piety” (Lines 8-9).

Related Titles

By William Wordsworth

Study Guide

A Complaint

My Heart Leaps Up

Themes

Memory

Childhood and Nature

Hope

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