My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold

 

         5. My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold (William Wordsworth)

My heart leaps up when I behold is a beautiful poem composed by a famous English romantic poet W. Wordsworth. He had very strong belief on nature. Nature inspired him to think very deeply over ordinary object. He found the hidden truth or secrets as well as the mystery in nature. He regarded nature as god or goddess.

In this poem, the poet recollects his childhood experiences and gives his emotions and feeling a meaning. The poet feels very happy and his heart is filled up with joy when he sees rainbow in the sky. He was also over joyed by seeing the rainbow in the sky in his childhood days. The rainbow is quite the same as it was before. He wants to see the same rainbow in the sky in his old age or in future. He doesn't want to be alive if there comes any changes in the rainbow when he will be an old man. He wants to pass his remaining days by binding himself to the nature or worshipping to nature.

The poet says, "The child is father of Man". This line is paradox. A paradox is a line or a statement which seems self-contradictory when we look at it on the surface. But if we observe meaning very deeply it is not contradictory. In this poem, poet believes that all our knowledge, wisdom, culture, ideas, feeling, belief etc are acquired in the childhood stage and they set the personality of the youth and the future. He comes to this conclusion by comparing the rainbow in the past and in present.  He believes that manhood is the production of childhood experiences. According to him present is the outcome of the past so, naturally future will be the outcome of present.

Thus, he wishes to be bound forever and worship the nature. For him nature is everything i.e god, goddess religion etc. He wants to respect the nature by remembering his childhood days with the help of rainbow.