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 the father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

This poem, lines from which Wordsworth would also use as the epigraph to his longer ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality, neatly conveys the spirit of English Romanticism in Wordsworth’s declaration that ‘the Child is Father of the Man’: our childhoods are formative times. But the poem is also a triumphant celebration of the beauty of the natural world, here illustrated by the rainbow.

In the poem, Wordsworth observes a rainbow in the sky and is filled with joy at the sight of a rainbow: a joy that was there when Wordsworth was very young, is still there now he has attained adulthood, and – he trusts – will be with him until the end of his days. If he loses this exciting sense of wonder, what would be the point of living?

Some commentators have assumed that Wordsworth felt such joy because the rainbow indicates the constancy of his relationship with nature throughout his life. Others have said that it celebrates "the continuity in Wordsworth's consciousness of self"