My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky

There are these simple things that can delight a person in the way it did when one was a child. It is these things in which we need not look further than how a child sees it in the way that Wordsworth embodies in his 1802 poem I well well acquainted with as a child, one which brings up one of these simple things, a rainbow. The rainbows that I have seen in the last few days brought me back to that poem and what is embodied in the poem – the simplicity of childhood and how a “Child is the father of the Man”. My heart does leap up when I behold that rainbow in the sky.

My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold ...

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.

- William Wordsworth, 1802.

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