“My Heart Leaps Up” Introduction

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“My Heart Leaps Up” Summary

“My Heart Leaps Up” Themes

• 

  The Importance of Childhood Wonder

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• 

  The Beauty and Comfort of Nature

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “My Heart Leaps Up”

• Lines 1-2

  My heart leaps up when I behold 
     A rainbow in the sky:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 3-6

  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!

  

  

  

  

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• Line 7

  The Child is father of the Man;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 8-9

  And I could wish my days to be
  Bound each to each by natural piety.

  

  

  

  

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“My Heart Leaps Up” Symbols

• 

  The Rainbow

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“My Heart Leaps Up” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Enjambment

  

  

  

  

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• Anaphora

  

  

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

  

  

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• Paradox

  

  

  

  

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• Assonance

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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“My Heart Leaps Up” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Behold
• bound
• Piety

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “My Heart Leaps Up”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“My Heart Leaps Up” Speaker

“My Heart Leaps Up” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “My Heart Leaps Up”

More “My Heart Leaps Up” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth — Dorothy kept a detailed diary of the days she spent living with her brother William in Dove cottage. Some entries reveal the context and inspiration for many of the poems in Wordsworth's 1807 collection. 

  • Preface to the Lyrical Ballads — Read Wordsworth's famous essay in which he defends and clarifies his ideas about poetry and articulates some ideals of the Romantic movement.

  • Preface to the Lyrical Ballads Analysis — Get LitChart's analysis of Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, so you can fully understand it.

  • Childhood and Romanticism — Article from the British Library expanding upon Romantic ideas about childhood. 

  • The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a recording of "My Heart Leaps Up."

• LitCharts on Other Poems by William Wordsworth

  • A Complaint

  • A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

  • Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

  • Expostulation and Reply

  • Extract from The Prelude (Boat Stealing)

  • It Is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free

  • I Travelled Among Unknown Men

  • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

  • Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

  • Lines Written in Early Spring

  • London, 1802

  • Mutability

  • Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room

  • Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

  • She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

  • She was a Phantom of Delight

  • The Solitary Reaper

  • The Tables Turned

  • The World Is Too Much With Us

  • Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower

  • To a Snowdrop

  • We Are Seven