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.
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.
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Thanks for the reference
From guest Arthur (contact)
Was just thinking about that line "The Child is the father of the man" and couldn't remember which poem it was from.
Dear Mrs. Pointer, my 8th grade Reading Appreciation teacher, tried so hard to get me to understand what that line meant, but I was so clueless back then. I think it took about 15 or 20 more years before I fully understood.
It really is a beautiful poem, and I should have remembered that it was Wordsworth. So I'm thankful that it was searchable and available on this site!
All the best to the webmaster(s)!
MOD MESSAGE
Thank you Arthur
The Oldpoetry Research Team -
my comment
From guest Mr. Magdy (contact)
i think everyone sees the world from his own point of view. Perhaps mine is different from his. However, I like his. -
My heart leaps up when I behold
From guest Elizabeth Balkir (contact)
These words of Wordsworth ring true to me in my own experience of nature. The delight I knew as an infant upon seeing a butterfly flitting blossom to blossom is yet with me today. The momentary peace of inhaling with closed eyes the fragrance after the rain has, with each subsequent encounter, bound my days together in a chain of memories to this very day. Perhaps the moments are not as pristine as when first as a child I knew them, yet still something wonderful is there to offer me a sense of awe and piety. And yet, had my experience been otherwise, as a child growing up with harsh cold realities around him, without love and nurturing, with no access to an unfettered natural world, that child in me would have fathered a person only attuned to those dark realities. Such a person, whose days are bound one to another with memories of an unlovely world, will not understand the delight others find in nature. Except for the grace of God, which can transform every human being from the depts of despair to the heights of joy, I know of no other way to redeem such a soul. The child is surely to become father to the man. Psychologists and social scientists seem to agree that the first four years of life are the most formative and, in fact, establish someone's character for life. Those who nurture a child from infancy have the greatest control over what our world will be like in the next generation. -
The Child is father of the man
From guest R Killean (contact)
To me these words mean that who you "become" as a child (through nurturing or lack thereof) determines a great deal of who you are as an adult. -
Interpretation of 3rd to last line:
From guest Patty (contact)
"The Child is father of the man" It's always struck me to mean that one day the child grows up and becomes the parental figure, or "the father" to his own father, and so on and on. What mean it to you? -
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A psychological interpretation
From guest S.S.Sundaresh (contact)
I think that a very influential book on psychology called " I`M O.K, YOU`RE O.K." from the 1980`s can be read into that one line " The child is the father of the Man" -
From guest J Via (contact)
Confucius said that if a man percieves the Way in the morning he can die happily that night. I also like how that one line being so conundrumic exceeds the perimiter of the poem without yet losing touch with it. That line makes the poem more than the sum of its parts! -
"So was it when my life began"
I believe that Wordsworth is using "it" to represent the childlike glee and appreciation of the wonders of nature (or God seen through nature) that he first saw in his youth, still experiences as a mature poet and hopefully will continue to experience throughout his life.
The glee that sees in a rainbow a natural example of Nature's (God's) grace and not just the effect of refracted light. -
So was "it" when my life began
From guest James (contact)
What is he referring to when he says "it"
MOD MESSAGE
See next comment! -
I see it as Gods Country.
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This is a measure of religious devotion. "The Child" refers to God's children, who can look at a rainbow and see God's promise, which is why his heart leaps when he views such a sight. He is recognizing himself as a child of God and declaring that he wants never to stop being awed by the natural wonder that communicates God's love for him. Finally, the children of God become fathers in their own right, but he doesn't ever want to forget his primary place as a child, lest he become arrogant.
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analysis
From guest zuko daka (contact)
Wordsworth ould possibly be making the child a Creater(metaphor)and that from ommon understanding a cild is percieved as a symbol of beauty/joy.Rainbow(colour),sky also (colour)all are visiul imageries which translate to feeling & love(religion/ belief /myth).The poem is full of feeling,a good feeling -first line that transscends to that of fear and to ope hope(also in blue for the sky)I would personaly recommend a eferenceto the lyrics by Rod Steward-"i don't wanna talk about it". -
Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up"
From guest Peter Steele Formica (contact)
wildness the allusion of a distorted nature (as a glimpse into the darkness of a wooded forest) is sobered & perceived by the truth & reality (justice & love)of God's creation. Such is the nature of piety, one of the gifts of the Spirit, one of the abilities & traits of a spiritual nature. -
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Mon interprétation !
From guest Hanna (contact)
Selon mon interprétation personnelle, cette fameuse phrase du célébre William Wordsworth, veut dire que le fondement de l'homme adulte se trouve dans l'enfant qu'il était. Car c'est l'enfance qui engendre l'homme adulte et lui donne ce qu'il doit être. L'enfance fait, crée et sculpte l'homme. Ce que demeure éternel chez l'être humain c'est la pureté de son âme et cela ne se trouve d'une manière translucide que dans son enfance, état de transparence et d'innoncence. Mais est-ce le cas de tout le monde ? -
just an opinion
From guest ray Cowbun (contact)
I think it means that the man (and his outlook on life) is formed by the child he was (and his childhood shapes his being)...thus becoming like a Father? -
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actually you are just about right. it is saying that what you experience as a child determines how you turn out as a man
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Confussion
these are really nice words but i cant understand why the Wordsworth compare the rainbow with his life (child, Man and when he should be old) but one thing is superb, the line No. 7
"The Child is father of the man;"
i really can't understand the exact meaning of it that what poet mean here, but its give me an idea; a very realistic idea, that its true, and the last two lines are really heart touching;
"And i wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."
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I believe the rainbow is just a peg on which Wordsworth is hanging his main point. It could have been lightning, thunder, stars or many hundreds of things that have a natural beauty about them that is seen by a child.
Often that beauty is lost when the underlying scientific fact is explained and that is sad.
So it is my belief that Wordsworth is saying that he will still appreciate the beauties that surround him in nature throughout his life and that if he loses that sense of wonder then it is time to give up
"So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!"
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"The Rainbow" poem by william wordsworth
From guest R.Subalakshmi (contact)
This poem is an interesting and an easily readable poem. It gets memorised easily even for a small child. the is the best work by wordsworth according to me. -
Great stuff
From guest Mike (contact)
Wish I woulda thought of that *wink*. I like rainbows, and so had to read this. "child is father of the man", meaning our inner child directs our actions, no doubt??? 'natural piety' a nice thought, or reverence of nature, not dictated by human preachers. -
From guest Alexandra (contact)
william wodsworth believed that peoples souls knew everything possible before being forced into the flesh; at the moment of birth one simply forgets everything his soul once knew. also, he lived his life believing as soon as one stops reveling in the marvalous miracles of nature, their death is marked. therefore, when he states the child is father of the man he is explicating his belief that the child is in constant astonishment with life unlike the father who has become immune to these day to day revelations. so, with that being said, the man should be learning from the appreciative attitude that the child has- in doing that, the two switch places of importance. the man no longer is guiding the child, the child is guiding the man. -
From guest Matt (contact)
The child is father of the man simply refers to the inevitable decline of the elderly. Therefore the child always inherits the earth so to speak, in my opinion. -
Apology
From guest Kwamboka Nyambati (contact)
I just love the poem and want to encouraged someone with these beautiful words. Thankyou. -
From guest Geoff (contact)
"The Chils id father of the man" The child knows more of life because the child is nearer it's previous state (the existance of his soul), and the man has drifted away from experience. Hence the child being of higher status to it's elder. -
child-father
From guest herlin (contact)
about "The Rainbow poem" especialy for the 7th line, it mighthave 2 means: 1. child will be same with his father,or let say, child have all the thing and father's characters.2,child faced to his or her father as what he wantto be.... to step the days. what do u think about this? thx -
School
From guest mike (contact)
im an eighth grade student and my english teacher is makeing the class memorize this poem for the final exam -
The child is father of the man
From guest Abby (contact)
I think that the line "The child is father of the man" is referring to Jesus. Jesus is the child of God, and he is also a "father" to man as well. It's just an assumption, and my personal opinion of that line -
On the Child being father of the Man
On the Child being father of the Man
Hello, Mazen.
I think your question is an important one; I myself have been bewildered by that line ever since I first read the poem when I was 13. Surprisingly, line 7, "The Child is father of the Man," is also the most often quoted line from this poem; yet it somehow remains impenetrable to me, sticking out of the rest of the poem in tone as an abberation departing from the natural, non-expository language of the poem.
What might have caused the writer to insert or to leave the anomaly? Why did he not simply write, "So was it when my life began; / So is it now I am a man; / Should I go blind to the rainbow of old, / Through the Child's eyes, let me see!"?
I can think of three factors:
1. He could have written about the naturally diminishing intuition, imagination, and feelings in response to sensation of natural phenomena such as the rainbow, the natural weakening of perceptiveness that accompanies aging, but he chose to keep to the romanticist notion of the supremacy of intuition, imagination, and feeling, which should stay as constant characteristics of the individual.
2. Romanticist poets held the idea that the primitive man and the child, being closer to nature and their natural state in which they were brought into the world compared to the "civilized man" (in terms of phylogeny) and the "grown-up man" (in terms of ontogeny), are the most pure, unadulterated, unaffected beings; hence the apex of development is supposedly reached during savagery or childhood after which humans experience a general decay in, and loss of, the ideal qualities that characterize being human according to Romanticists.
3. Faced with the obvious clash of logic, Wordsworth seems to have inserted a line, line 7, which betrayed his greatest fear: that he might some day lose the perceptive powers of the child, but that he must be reminded of the vitality of the ideal man only by inward introspection/remembrance and/or outward observation of the child-like state.
It has been said that poetic language, though it follows the rules and patterns of natural language for the most part, departs from it occasionally by intention, which has the effect of distancing the reader from what is familiar so as to bring about novel discoveries and insights that had not been generally possible prior to the composition/reading of the poem. The result might be a greater or less distancing from what we customarily perceive as real.
In the case of the Rainbow poem, the effect seems to be ambiguous. Faced with the conflicting internal logic, I do think line 7 is discordant with the rest of the poem. Wordsworth should have either reworked the rest of the poem or done away with line 7. All things considered, I think the Rainbow poem should do fine without line 7, which, incidentally, could stand alone as a 1-liner, or serve as the seed for another poetic piece, to great effect nonetheless, either way. -
The child
From guest Mazen (contact)
as I read this poem, I wondered much about the line which says ( The child is father of the man ). I could not relate it in my mind. If anyone can, then he might respectfully tell me. thanks -
refreshing
From guest Yun (contact)
What I can understand this poem from a foreigner's eye is that it pictures the fresh scene of a boy sees the rainbow. Even after many years, he can still remember it and he recalls the childhood pleasure of excitment and so on. Is that true?? -
The Child is Father to the Child
From guest sc (contact)
anyone got any suggestions on what it can mean its a pretty big oxymoron -
Nature worship
I just found this in an essay on poetry, at the 'Something Awful' website. I honestly thought it was a spoof, so 'Googled' the last line, to see if it was genuine. Mawkish twaddle devised for recitations by small children. -
natural piety
From guest Cynthia B (contact)
Building upon the idea of the child as basis for the adult we become, Wordsworth introduces "natural piety," which is reverential respect, as of a child for a parent. The last line tells us to revere the child within us by allowing him/her to participate in our adult life. Let's not be dried up, jaded, and empty by assigning no value to our youth. -
Wordsworth again..
I'm a big fan of William Wordsworth.. the poetry is always touching and beautiful... clear and pure.. I read this poem first time in school.. and since then this has been one of my favorite..
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missing some . . . see review
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.
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Thanks for pointing out the omission.
It has now been corrected.
Jim
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i have always loved this poem
i studied when i was at school, third preparatory (thats errr... grade 9) i had the book since grade 7 & i read at least 10 times before studying it
i think its magnificent and beautiful...
i still enjoy reading it
Wordsworth's poetry rocks... -
A wonderful piece, I love the line
The Child is father of the man
Excellent poem and thoughts on life in genral.
Andrew -
beauty
"The Child is father of the man;
And I wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."
What a Great piece of thought____ It's a beauty
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Overseeing his life, Wordsworth observed that what he was as a child fostered what he was later to become as a man. Also, he observed that - because of natural aging - in later years his children became his 'parents.'
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I think Danna has it right
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I think it's about rainbows and what he feels for life when he sees one? I dont know hes dead now so I guess we can just make stuff up LOL.
It's lovely though, I could hear his smile when I read it. -
It is about how Wordsworth wished to enjoy life to the fullest, experiencing the delight and wonder of natural beauty the way a child does,
The child is the father of the man... means that the things we do, learn to appriciate, as children will give birth to the adult we become, and if he loses his ability to appriciate the beauty around him, Wordsworth says it is time to die. -
what is this poem about ? please help
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