| 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. |
Romantic poetry was mainly focused on transcendence. The poems of this time were written in "real language" of men and about common life. It embraced the large, impressive forces of nature and the infinite resources of the human imagination. It also embraced the pastoral over the urban.
This poem is about Wordsworth's love for rainbows. Really. He is talking about how much joy he derives from rainbows and how it has been this way since he was a little boy. He also hopes he feels this way about rainbows when he is old or else he will want to die. He also asserts that since the child comes before the man, the child in all of us is the "father" of us. I'm making this more complicated than it is, he's just trying to say that the youth we retain stays with us forever and comes out in times like when you are viewing a rainbow. Wordsworth ends the poem on a deep note by wishing all of his days could be strung together with the beauty of nature and whatnot.
I think this poem fits the characteristics of Romantic poetry. He wrote this poem one day after he wrote another poem of his. It was an ordinary day and he took the idea of a rainbow and made it transcendent. He made a simple rainbow an extraordinary thing and something very integral to his life.
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