The example to analysis poem

My Heart Leaps Up

  by William Wordsworth

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.

1.  PARAPHRASE

Line 1 :

My heart leaps up when I behold

-         The heart has no legs. This makes it hard for it to literally leap on its own.

-         We can infer that the heart will "leap," even if the speaker is otherwise depressed. Perhaps he actually feels a kind of jolt in his chest. 

Line 2 :

A rainbow in the sky:

-         We find out what makes the speaker's heart leap up: a rainbow. Because of the strategic line break, and the indentation, our hearts leap a little bit when we read this line too—or at least our eyes do. 

Line 3 :

So was it when my life began; 

• Here we learn that the speaker has had this feeling about rainbows ever since his life began, which we take to mean his childhood, when he was just a wee tyke.

Line 4 :

So is it now I am a man; 

-         Now we learn that the speaker still gets excited by the sight of a rainbow, even as a mature adult. We understand that the speaker is reflecting as an adult, but really, he's just a kid at heart.

Line 5 - 6 :

So be it when I shall grow old,
   Or let me die!

-         So we've heard about the thrill of rainbows in the speaker's past and present. Now we hear about the future. The speaker is sure that when he grows old, he will still be thrilled at the sight of a rainbow. 

-         Then we get an indented line again, and we encounter a bit of a pause, at least visually. At the end of this pause, the speaker lets us know that he is so thrilled by rainbows that, if he ever lost this thrill, he would want to die. Intense. 

-         For him, life without the capacity to appreciate nature's beauty would not be worth living.

Line 7 :

The Child is father of the Man; 

-         The speaker has shown us how important it is that something that thrilled him when he was young continues to thrill him when he grows old. He is saying here that his childhood formed who he is as an adult—his self, as a child, fathered, or gave birth to, his adult self. It seems the speaker treasures the fact that he still has a childlike capacity for wonder.

-         Also note the capitalization of the words "Child" and "Man" in this line. This is a way to draw attention to the general truth of the line. It is meant to have a wider meaning than just in the speaker's life. A rainbow brings out the child in all of us.

Line 8 – 9 :

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

-         The speaker now expresses that he hopes nature will tie his days together forever, as we can imagine a child's days would be tied together by playing outside.

-         Well, they would all have the same thing in common. Think about when you went to the same park to play, every day of summer vacation. That experience tied your summer together. Well, here the speaker wants all of his days to feature this same feeling of wonder for the natural world. 

-         Piety normally has a religious connotation. Someone who follows the laws of their religion and is very devoted to God would be called pious. So we might interpret "natural piety" as a religion that is natural, or not forced. 

-         These two lines sort of put the rest of the poem in context. The rainbow, which thrills the speaker throughout his life, is an example of a form of natural piety, his sense of joy and wonder at the natural world. That sense is what he hopes to experience for the rest of his days, his time on earth.

2.  RHYTHM

for the rhythm of this poem is "iambic tetrameter. Iambic tetrameter just means that the poem has four beats per line (with a few exceptions), and these beats happen to be arranged in a repeating pattern of iambs, four in (almost) every line.

·         The Child is fa ther of the Man;

3.  RHYME

My heart leaps up when I behold                                     A

   A rainbow in the sky:                                                      B

So was it when my life began;                                           C

So is it now I am a man;                                                    C

So be it when I shall grow old,                                          A

   Or let me die!                                                                  B

The Child is father of the Man;                                         C

And I could wish my days to be                                        D

Bound each to each by natural piety.                                              D

4.  FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE

• The first line is an example of personification: hearts don't leap, people do. This personification gives us an image of the heart's jubilation at the sight of the rainbow. 
• three lines in a row have started with the word "so," which is an example of anaphora, the literary term for multiple lines starting with the same word or phrase. 

5.  SYMBOLS

There are two kinds of symbols in this poem :
1. Nature Imagery

The speaker loves nature a bunch. Like, a whole bunch. He loves it so much, in fact, that he expresses a wish to die if he is no longer thrilled at the sight of a rainbow. While he's still alive, he wants nature in his life, every day. It's possible that he even sees nature as a form of religion or spirituality.

2. Age Imagery

This poem covers the range of human life, from childhood, to adulthood, to old age and death. It stresses the influence of childhood throughout life, not just until one "matures." The most important part of that childhood influence, for our speaker, is the unbridled joy that a child finds in the natural world.

6.  SUBJECT MATTER

The subject matter of this poem is about ”LIFE”

Because, the poem tells about the range of human life, from childhood, to adulthood, to old age and death.

7.  THEME

The theme of this poem is about someone that telling his life starting from the children life till he turned old and about his religion life.

8.  REASON

Because the speaker is telling us about the feeling he gets, has always gotten, and will always get when he sees a rainbow in the sky: his heart rejoices. He says that if he were ever to stop feeling this joy, he'd want to die.